Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M
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Re: Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M
#2Opera gets in bed with Google Chrome and then sues the other camp? I thought they were above all this.
Either way, an idea for a browser feature is hardly a huge industrial secret - Webkit, Blink and Gecko have near-parity on features, and are competing more on speed. How would this stand up in court?
Neither Google nor Opera have anything to gain from this - what could be the economic rationale?
Re: Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M
#3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire
Surely work for hire applies?
Re: Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M
#4Opera gets in bed with Google Chrome and then sues the other camp? I thought they were above all this. Either way, an idea for a browser feature is hardly a huge industrial secret - Webkit, Blink and Gecko have near-parity on features, and are competing more on speed. How would this stand up in court? Neither Google nor Opera have anything to gain from this - what could be the economic rationale?
"Opera gets in bed with Google Chrome and then sues the other camp? I thought they were above all this."
These two things are not linked, stop trying to make it so.
Re: Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M
#5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire Surely work for hire applies?
Last time I checked, Norway was not really part of the US, so the law might actually be different…
Re: Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M
#6http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire Surely work for hire applies?
Last time I checked, Norway was not really part of the US, so the law might actually be different…
It's not just a US concept. Norway seems to have fairly strong protections on the expression of ideas - i.e. you can't copyright ideas in many cases. I wonder do they have special laws for trade secrets. Opera are going to have difficulty hiring people if they are suing former employees.
Re: Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M
#7http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire Surely work for hire applies?
This is a trade secret case. If he genuinely had trade secrets (the bar for that is pretty high in the US), things like work for hire, non-competes (which are officially allowed in the US outside of California to prevent the "first bite of the apple" of trade secret disclosure), etc. are irrelevant.
Re: Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M
#8Hard to say anything without hard details, but in Europe this stuff can be hard to make stick.
Also this kind of actioning is distrubing from a company like opera.
Death throes?
Re: Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M
#9http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire Surely work for hire applies?
This is a trade secret case. If he genuinely had trade secrets (the bar for that is pretty high in the US), things like work for hire, non-competes (which are officially allowed in the US outside of California to prevent the "first bite of the apple" of trade secret disclosure), etc. are irrelevant.
https://www.aippi.org/download/commitees/215/GR215norway.pdf
It seems it's a Norwegian case - they seem to have pretty strict laws for trade secrets laid out in the above pdf. The claim is given in Norwegian Krone.
Re: Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M
#10Hard to say anything without hard details, but in Europe this stuff can be hard to make stick. Also this kind of actioning is distrubing from a company like opera. Death throes?
There's nothing disturbing about protecting trade secrets, if this is what it is. Now if this was about a non-compete clause, I might agree with you...