RE: [dvd-discuss] Court Sides With Geac in Mainframe Software Case

[Richard Hartman <hartman(at)onetouch.com>]

Usually the non-disclosure agreements are required
to obtain the code.  If the code is there, but something
says "do not open until agreement signed" then somebody
really wasn't paying attention.

AFAICT the third-party did not modify code -- nor did
they _have_ the code -- they modified the binary ... 
perhaps they could only do this because they had 
knowledge of the product from when the worked there
... but nonetheless, they didn't modify -- or view 
-- the code when they were working for the third-party.


-- 
-Richard M. Hartman
hartman@onetouch.com

186,000 mi/sec: not just a good idea, it's the LAW!



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roy Murphy [mailto:murphy@panix.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 15, 2002 6:01 PM
> To: dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
> Subject: Re: [dvd-discuss] Court Sides With Geac in Mainframe Software
> Case
> 
> 
> 'Twas brillig when Dean Sanchez scrobe:
> >Did anyone notice the outcome of this case?  The Appeals court is 
> >basically stating that modifying code for interoperability 
> is >copyright infringement.
>  We don't want to have any of the "promoting >progress" 
> nonsense getting in
> the way of corporate profits, do we?  >Everyone should know 
> by now that reverse
> engineering is bad, bad, bad!
> 
> I think that the case has been somewhat misrepresented. The 
> license for the
> software required that any third-party maintainers sign a 
> non-disclosure agreement
> with GEAC before being allowed to view the code. The 
> consultants in question
> were former employees of GEAC and they, arguably, used trade 
> secrets that they
> learned while working for GEAC in order to accomplish the 
> modifications that
> were requested. They did not sign non-disclosure agreements 
> as required by the
> license.
> 
> The problem was not making modifications to a source code 
> supplied software
> package, the problem was doing so without getting the 
> required non-disclosure
> agreements.
> 
> When a software provider makes source code available for 
> modifications and the
> sorce code contains trade secrets, I think it's quite 
> reasonable for them to
> require non-disclosure agreements from third-party consultants.
>  
> -- 
> Roy Murphy      \ CSpice -- A mailing list for Clergy Spouses
> murphy@panix.com \  http://www.panix.com/~murphy/CSpice.html
>