21–30 of 442 posts
"That evidence does suggest the engineers drew on knowledge and skills they gained from Hooked to develop a product for their new employer––but California’s policy favoring free mobility for employees specifically allows that. (See Whyte v. Schlage Lock Co. (2002) 101Cal.App.4th 1443, 1464 [rejecting the “inevitable disclosure” doctrine, under which a claim for trade secret misappropriation is stated if an employee’s…
I don't understand why there is no Silicon Valley in Europe then
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's funny as workers get caught up in notions of 'individual freedom', which they see as a benefit, but don't realize that systematically what this favours is simply power. A company with 100x the resources of another, never needs to worry about IP or innovating, because it just plucks off other people's work, integrates into it's own machine and receives the market surpluses, risk free. So yes - by getting tons of…
> IP rules favour the little guy This is one of the most absurd and backwards claims I've seen on this site. Large companies are members of patent pools that prevent them from being sued by other members, whereas small companies without a large IP portfolio can't do anything without inadvertently violating someone's patent.
IP is one of the very few areas wherein smaller companies can have any hope of leverage over larger ones.
That small companies are blocked from some other patents is an issue, but a lesser one - and it applies to big and small alike.
"whereas small companies without a large IP portfolio can't do anything without inadvertently violating someone's patent." - is plainly false.
Obviously, companies continue to innovate.
Large companies have much more to protect, and far from 'being safe' - IP laws make them more risk averse if anything because they put a lot more at risk than smaller one's.
Google has outright banned their employees from even downloading MongoDB etc. due to lack of clarity over licensing. Without IP protections, Google wouldn't care one bit what they did.
Large companies play against each other mostly in the domain of competition, without IP laws they would step on every smaller company like little ants, without any concern.
Sounds like a few engineers found out that Apple was looking into their company and knowing Apple was interested they took a new gig, meanwhile the CEO got upset and decided to fire the last remaining defecting engineer, who out of goodness of heart actually declined Apple, but gratefully took the offer once he got fired. Although it probably hurts to have your team poached, it sounds like potentially it wasn't a gre…
We should rid of the term 'poaching'. There's no such thing. We're not animals, we are free to accept a better offer it comes along. The CEO should have counter offered with something more substantial, but he couldn't so the engineers went to greener pastures.
She.
"That evidence does suggest the engineers drew on knowledge and skills they gained from Hooked to develop a product for their new employer––but California’s policy favoring free mobility for employees specifically allows that. (See Whyte v. Schlage Lock Co. (2002) 101Cal.App.4th 1443, 1464 [rejecting the “inevitable disclosure” doctrine, under which a claim for trade secret misappropriation is stated if an employee’s…
I don't understand why there is no Silicon Valley in Europe then
Reading through the document I am honestly shocked at the behaviour of the CEO, I mean come on how entitled do you have to be to try and think you have a right to sell employees of your choosing to Apple for a handsome fee, like they are your cattle..
Sounds like a few engineers found out that Apple was looking into their company and knowing Apple was interested they took a new gig, meanwhile the CEO got upset and decided to fire the last remaining defecting engineer, who out of goodness of heart actually declined Apple, but gratefully took the offer once he got fired. Although it probably hurts to have your team poached, it sounds like potentially it wasn't a gre…
I can't imagine why you'd ever feel bad for a company that fails to retain its staff. Employees finding better jobs in other companies is one of the best market outcomes you could want.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's funny as workers get caught up in notions of 'individual freedom', which they see as a benefit, but don't realize that systematically what this favours is simply power. A company with 100x the resources of another, never needs to worry about IP or innovating, because it just plucks off other people's work, integrates into it's own machine and receives the market surpluses, risk free. So yes - by getting tons of…
That sounds like something someone who has never been taken to court over IP rights would say. I have, and it cost us $10k to get told "you're screwed." by the lawyer that was suggested by friends as one of the better ones for startups.
For every time a large company trolls a smaller one, there are 100 times one company decides not to infringe on some other work.
For example, I work with a hardware company that has patents. We freely send our products to larger competitors. Why? Because they know we have good IP, and were they to copy our approach, it would be a straightforward infringement on us, and it would risk their entire business.
Admittedly, we are luckily that infringement in this case would be fairly clear because that's not always the case.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand why there is no Silicon Valley in Europe then
Aversion to risk. I was told by German entrepreneurs that they can get funding only when they give bank/VC/investor a collateral of the same value or if they are already profitable and don't need it anymore.
European laws, regulations, and investor culture are all setup in ways that hurt startups.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand why there is no Silicon Valley in Europe then
There are lots of theories. One of the main ones is that national policies around employee equity vary throughout Europe and are often severely disadvantageous (particularly Spain and Germany). Lots of European entrepreneurs are calling on policy makers to both normalize this within the EU, as well as making the policies competitive (e.g., [1]). Of course that statement misses some of the “why not ”. The tax treatmen…
I would also add that employee perception about the value of equity vs salary varies across countries in Europe. High stable salaries could be preferred over equity in good welfare states with employee-favorable legislation where firing people is harder (Germany & France for example).