Alcatel Owns an Employees Thoughts

Alcatel's USA division has won a 51/2 year court case to claim an employees thoughts while at work are construed as its property. In normal working practice, and product or invention created by an employee while at work becomes the property of the employer, but in this situation, former Alcatel employee Evan Brown says that his invention was never written down or developed while he was an employee of Alcatel. Brown also claims that he started work on the invention 12 years before he started working for DSC Communications, which later merged to form Alcatel USA.

The software technique that Brown was claiming ownership of is the process of converting machine-executable binary code into high-level source code, also reverse-engineering the intelligence from existing programs and recoding it into high-level language and finally, converting machine code into C language source.

Alcatel's attorney Eric Pinker of Dallas' Lynn Tillotson & Pinker told law.com that he is pleased but not surprised that the court upheld the agreement. It affirms "very well-understood and very well-accepted legal doctrines," Pinker says, adding that "invention disclosure agreements are enforceable in the state of Texas."

Brown has been ordered to pay Alcatel's legal fees, which are reportedly in excess of US$330,000 and must hand over his development, exclusively to Alcatel.

Evan Brown's web site at www.unixguru.com had not been updated with the details of the court judgment at the time of going to press.'"

Posted to the site on 13th August 2002