
Google Sued Over Google Sky Feature - auferstehung
http://www.enews20.com/news_Google_Sued_Over_Google_Sky_Feature_05900.html
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zach
I say award him liquidated damages of $20 according to Sivers' Rule:

[http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/08/ideas_are_just...](http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/08/ideas_are_just_a_multiplier_of.html)

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redorb
$25 million? When was the last time anyone got $25 million just for their
idea? Not even a prototype, but an idea in a blog post? ...

since when was a blog post a patent?

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dkokelley
Critical sentence:

"Jonathan Cobb claims that _during his work for Google as contractor_ he
posted a complete description of Google Sky in an internal Google discussion
group."

Who knows what kind of contract work he was doing, but I'll bet there's a
clause in his contract from Google that states "All your base are belong to
us." Besides, it was posted in an internal discussion group. The ideas there
already belong to Google by default.

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boredguy8
"Besides, it was posted in an internal discussion group. The ideas there
already belong to Google by default."

Fortunately there's no foundation for that claim for many reasons, the
simplest of which is that ideas belong to no one.

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dkokelley
I don't know where this "Ideas belong to no one" concept comes from, but I
don't quite understand the logic behind it. Please explain. (This is confusing
to me because by this logic the person can't sue Google because Google didn't
take "his" ideas, since the idea doesn't belong to anyone.)

If it is an internal company blog, it is assumed to be used exclusively by
Google insiders to collaborate and share ideas. If this person posted his
ideas there, either as part of his contract work or not, it is assumed that
Google has the authority to act on information presented there, unless poster
didn't have the authority to post the information there.

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boredguy8
derefr pretty much hit the nail on the head as to the reality of things. See
[http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/12/smbusiness/patent_website.fs...](http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/12/smbusiness/patent_website.fsb/index.htm)
for the quote from the US PTO. But he didn't explain the logic behind that
reasoning. The theory is that patents are given for things that are non-
intuitive: in order for a firm to recoup the "sunk costs" of R&D that led to
the creation of the patent in the first place.

Second, you don't understand what constitutes suing. You can sue anyone for
any reason (with rare exception). I'm just indicating that he'll lose, if all
he said was, "Hey, we should have a Google Maps for the sky!" he doesn't stand
a snowball's chance in hell of winning.

Third, if he shared patentable information, that doesn't automatically become
Google's. Some employers (Radio Shack, for instance) have you sign a contract
when you're hired saying that anything you invent as a consequence of your
work there belong to them as a result. Some schools require it if you do
research there. But if I posted the draft of a patent application to a
discussion group, it wouldn't then be available for anyone to try and patent.
Even if it's a discussion board at work.

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dkokelley
You're absolutely correct about the suing remark. I should have said "He can't
have a valid basis for suing..."

If he shared _Patented_ information, Google would not have free access to use
it. A great deal new ideas are patentable (though I hear the process can be a
nightmare), but whether or not the Google Sky concept was patented is not the
issue.

Like I said before, I am pretty sure Google would have had some sort of clause
that allowed them to use anything this contractor came up with as a
consequence of working at/with/for Google. And if he used an internal Google
discussion board (presumably used by those working for Google to share
information) to discuss the concept, then Google should and probably does have
a legally defensible right to use those ideas for its own purposes.

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amohr
Doesn't say when he posted, but his idea sounds a lot like celestia
<http://www.shatters.net/celestia/>

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limeade
I emailed Google the same idea a few years ago and never heard back. It's
pretty obvious.

