
Opera claims ex-employee took trade secrets to Mozilla, sues him for $3.4M - sverrejoh
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/29/opera-claims-former-employee-gave-away-trade-secrets-to-mozilla-sues-him-for-3-4m/
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sudhirj
Opera 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?

~~~
rurounijones
"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.

~~~
mtrimpe
They seem linked to me. Since cases like this are _much_ harder to pull off
under European law unless you can show actual copy-pasted code, this (like the
WebKit move) looks like the symptoms of clueless non-technical management
taking over and destroying the company by desperately trying to 'save it.'

~~~
DannyBee
There is _nothing_ in the article that says anything about anything related to
Google Chrome.

~~~
mtrimpe
I'm trying to say that they are linked through an underlying cause. Pornel
says it much better than me in his comment though.

Jon's closing email is also quite telling:

    
    
        Dear All,
    
        It is with a heavy heart that I send this message. Next week will be my last 
        at Opera. It has become clear that The Board, Management and I do not share 
        the same values and we do not have the same opinions on how to keep evolving 
        Opera. As a result I have come to an agreement with the Board to end my time 
        at Opera. I feel the Board and Management is more quarterly focused than me. 
        I have always worked to build the company for the future. I believe the 
        foundation we have is very solid to build further upon.
        
        I do believe strongly in Opera as a company, and in all of you working here. 
        Our products actually make a difference for a lot of people in the world, and 
        I wish you all the best of luck moving forward. I will be following the 
        company closely and rooting for you all.
    
        Yours truly, Jon.

~~~
Indyan
In that email he was probably referring to the direction the board wanted to
take Opera in. There has been consistent speculation that Opera's board wanted
to make Opera better suited for sale, and was looking forward to getting
acquired by someone with deeper pockets. JvT of course, wanted to stay
independent and continue to innovate.

Related: <http://techie-buzz.com/opera/opera-tetzchner-reacts.html>

------
easytiger
Hard 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?

~~~
Indyan
He has denied the allegations (as expected). But, at the same time, he also
told this to Digi.No.

"When I left the Opera, I did not feel my ideas bore fruit, and I also
notified management about. I am a very creative person and I feel that my
ideas had value. I would like that my ideas were to reach users".

Source: <http://www.digi.no/915782/opera-saksoker-eks-ansatt>

~~~
at-fates-hands
This is probably closer to the truth. Seems like Opera is acting more like a
jilted lover than anything else. Guy has some good ideas and in the interest
of profit, they get buried. He goes across the street where Mozilla sees the
potential and implements them and now Opera wants he to pay up for them?

I'm all for keeping trade secrets, but this more along the lines of abstract
ideas, not the sort of thing you'll have an easy time in a court of law
proving.

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gcp
Interesting that the claim is "took trade secrets to Mozilla" when apparently
Mozilla wants to have nothing to do with that Junior prototype.

------
smoyer
Their lawsuit claims that "Opera Software ASA is an innovative company which
has developed software and technology which have proved to be successful
internationally".

The article talks about features which aren't really IP. Perhaps their trade-
secrets relate to coding and construction methods that make their product
superior, but these really can't be protected unless they're so esoteric that
no one would logically come up with them independently.

So they sue a non-profit to stifle competition in their industry ... show me
more innovation (and market-share) than Mozilla and then maybe I'll believe
you're the innovator.

~~~
Shorel
Trond Werner Hansen is not a non-profit. In fact, he's not even a corporation.

As a side note, 80% of features in Mozilla were first done in Opera. I even
remember a Firebird (as it was called back in the day, before version 1.0) fan
or zealot badmouthing Opera and its tabs as being a ridiculous and unnecessary
feature. After just four months, that feature was copied. It seems that crowd
has not changed even a little.

The only good thing in Mozilla is the OSS license. The only reason they have
market share is the OSS license.

~~~
icebraining
I don't think the event you describe was possible, because Mozilla had tabs
before Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox even existed. In any case, Opera copied the
tabs from other browsers too, so I'm not sure what's your point with that
story.

By the way, it wasn't just about the OSS license. Back in the day Opera had a
big honking ad right in the main window. They only released an ad-free version
in 2005, when Firefox already had 16 times the share of Opera.

~~~
yareally
I think he perhaps means tabs with a true document interface[1] (i.e multiple
web pages can be opened within the same application window and be resized,
moved, tiled, and cascaded like normal application windows in the operating
system).

Edit: Seems Opera added tabs slightly before Mozilla after looking it up out
of interest[2]. Also just some random history on tab integration in web
browsers. Mozilla 0.9.5 added them a few months after Opera 4 in 2001, though
of course neither was the first. I guess one can say Opera was the first
browser to add them that is still a fairly popular browser in present day.

 _Four years later, in 1994, BookLink Technologies featured tabbed windows in
its InternetWorks browser. That same year, a text editor called UltraEdit also
appeared with a modern multi-row tabbed interface. The tabbed interface
approach was then followed by the Internet Explorer shell NetCaptor in 1997.
These were followed by a number of others like IBrowse in 1999, and Opera in
[June] 2000 (with the release of version 4 - although a MDI interface was
supported before then), MultiViews October 2000, which changed its name into
MultiZilla on 1 April 2001 (an extension for the Mozilla Application
Suite[7]), Galeon in early 2001, Mozilla 0.9.5 in October 2001, Phoenix 0.1
(now Mozilla Firefox) in October 2002, Konqueror 3.1 in January 2003, and
Safari in 2003. With the release of Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, all major web
browsers featured a tabbed interface._

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_of_the_Opera_web_brows...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_of_the_Opera_web_browser#Tabbed_browsing)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabbed_browsing#History>

~~~
icebraining
I don't think so, Mozilla browsers never had MDI[1], so they couldn't have
copied it from Opera.

[1]: There's a feature request since 2000, but it was never implemented:
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60775>

~~~
yareally
Oh, I wasn't talking about Mozilla (the precursor) in regards to that, just
Firefox after ditching the Netscape legacy. Sorry for the ambiguity.

------
eliasmacpherson
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire> Surely work for hire applies?

~~~
claudius
Last time I checked, Norway was not really part of the US, so the law might
actually be different…

~~~
eliasmacpherson
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.

~~~
icebraining
Pretty sure you can't copyright ideas anywhere.

~~~
homosaur
Be sure to let the US Patent Office know about that.

~~~
whafro
The USPTO is likely well aware that they have nothing to do with copyright,
just the Patents and Trademarks mentioned in their name.

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ttrreeww
Guess it's time to stop using Opera

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stefantalpalaru
Was the trade secret "switch to webkit"?

~~~
pavanky
Did you even read the article ?

~~~
stefantalpalaru
I did. Here's the relevant section:

"For the record: we have not yet had the chance to look at the lawsuit
documents or discuss the specifics of the allegations and size of the claimed
damages with Opera management or its lawyers, but we’ll update this post as
soon as we have."

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revx
Definitely read that as "Oprah" and was very confused.

~~~
Shorel
Definitely beating a dead horse.

