

Portland startup Think Brilliant sues The Office's Rainn Wilson - hariis
http://blog.oregonlive.com/siliconforest/2010/07/portland_startup_think_brillia.html

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shib71
His attempts to get comments from Think Brilliant and Wilson seem extremely
cursory. Calling a business after hours is bad enough, but expecting someone
to comment on a _tweet_ \- seriously?

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pinchyfingers
The article doesn't have any details about how Think Brilliant was supposed to
be compensated, so it is hard to understand what is actually going on here.

Anyway, Wilson is an incredible actor.

~~~
datasink
The linked PDF is interesting:
[http://media.oregonlive.com/siliconforest/other/think_brilli...](http://media.oregonlive.com/siliconforest/other/think_brilliant.pdf)

Rainn Wilson partners with a web design firm to develop SoulPancake in
exchange for monthly payments and the verbal promise of equity at some later
point. Two years pass. Monthly payments were made, but in the end negotiations
fall through while negotiating equity agreement and Rainn kills the
development service relationship. So no more work and no more monthly
payments. Things get nasty, and Rainn sends a nastygram to the staff at Think
Brilliant accusing them of fraud.

The "hacking" end of the complaint makes little sense, with proprietary source
code being extracted from a "database". Trying to parse the wording, it sounds
like they downloaded stuff they shouldn't have while trying to migrate the
site from Think Brilliant servers. The "database" may be referring to an SVN
repository.

I wouldn't have thought you could make a stand in court on a verbal agreement.
I'm curious as to how the Quantum Meruit claim will pan out given a history of
compensated work, and how promises of equity fit in.

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Elite
> _The company says that...the company or Wilson "surreptitiously hacked into
> plaintiff’s database with an unauthorized 'administrator' password,
> extracted confidential materials" and gained access to Think Brilliant's
> confidential materials._

Sounds like something Mr. Shrute would do. GUILTY!

