From: "Brenton" 
Reply-To: Brenton , Fidonet AVtech Echo
	

Hi Bob,

I didn't follow that case, or even look at it when it was in the media.
However, after seeing our legal system up close and personal a year ago, nothing
would surprise me.

Short version is ... A friend of mine sold all intellectual property and
copyright, in his software product to a company some years ago for $60,000-  As
part of the sale, there was a non-compete clause which ran for 4 years.  Think
about that for a moment, for $60k, this bloke was expected to not work for 4
years !!!  His intention with selling the DOS based product was to redevelop a
new system in Windows.  He was actually encouraged to do this by the company who
bought the DOS product.  They wanted to be the exclusive distributors for it.
While the new owners of his old product were selling their new ( his old )
product, my friend maintained the DOS system for them at no charge.  They
continued to encourage him to develop a Window system for them to distribute.

Then a boy wonder came along and told them that he could write them a Windoze
system for under $20,000-  Of course, they jumped at this, and gave my mate the
arse.  Two years later, and they still didn't have a Windoze system.  By this
time, my friend had developed a full Windoze system and was forced to start
selling it 3 months before the 4-year non-compete clause ended, because he had
no income at all, and as these people were going to get their new Windoze system
"any day now" ( after 2 years ), they didn't need his.

To start with, they claimed that he had stolen the source-code to their DOS
product.  I mean, after all, he must have, he wrote the original DOS product,
and all he did was to put a Windows face on the DOS product, right :)  Believe
it or not, this ended up in the Supreme Court, because it started out as a
Copyright issue.  After two years, and $250,000- of legal bullshit, it finally
went in front of a Judge.  These people claimed all sorts of losses from my
friend entering the market early.  They used every trick in the book, and their
tactics were abhorrent.  They had the court force my friend to let their
programmers look at the source code to his Windoze system so they could look for
the copyright violations, when in fact, they were trying to work out how the
hell he did what he did.  They had the court seize all of his financial records,
yet they couldn't produce theirs until 5pm on the second last day of the case,
because of "computer problems".  To cut to the chase, when I
finally got their
books 16 hours before the start of the final day, I sat down and broke down
every invoice they had written since buying the product.  For their $60,000-
purchase, these people made $2,500,000 from sales of the software and updates
which were provided to them at no charge.  The Judge threw the copyright case
out, as there was clearly no violation, this took a whole 60 minutes on the
first or four days.  The remaining four days were spent disembowing my friend,
and his personal life, while his accusers were allowed to submit obviously
forged documents to the court.  For example, there was one document they
produced at 9am which was printed on a bubble-jet printer, and was supposedly 2
years old, yet the ink was glistening as though it had been printed earlier that
morning.  I was surprised that the Judge didn't smudge the ink as he took it in
his hand.

As the copyright matter was dispensed of immediately, the Judge should not have
heard the case, as it was then outside the juristiction of the Supreme Court,
yet he continued to do so.  In the end he fined my friend $80,000- for returning
to the market 3 months early.  This for a product, which they paid only $60,000-
for !!!  If you can make sense of that, you're a better man than me.  There were
avenues everywhere for appeal, although having just been raped by the sytem
once, my mate decided to hock what meager possessions he had left, and is still
trying to get out of it.

Am I surprised that this lady was fucked and burned by our Judical System, nope
!

I would warn anyone, if you ever have someone trying to drag you into a legal
battle, do everything possible to avoid it.  Once you get sucked in by the
vultures, there will be absolutely nothing left of you.  My mate would have got
off lighter, if he had taken a gun and blown these bastards away, and next time,
I think he will.

Cheers, Brenton


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