Here's a really nasty scenario playing out in court...this is very much the sort of situation we seek to avoid here at UMD via our reliance on off-site storage of source code (sourceforge and cpan), and even more importantly the use of the GPL. As I've commented on elsewhere (Computational Linguistics, Sept 2008), the GPL very nicely handles the issue of our rights when we move on to other opportunities...in this case, it is alleged the plaintiff took what he believed to be his code with him and left not a trace of it behind...
---------------------------------- http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/mostread/s_625414.html Mayo Clinic, doctor battle over software rights By Walter F. Roche Jr. TRIBUNE-REVIEW Saturday, May 16, 2009 The Mayo Clinic, the famed health care organization, and its data processing partner Cerner Corp. are asking a federal judge to slap a gag order on a key former employee to bar him from even speaking about a new health technology product. In a lawsuit pending in federal court, Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo charged that "once trusted" executive Peter L. Elkin walked off with key backup data on a software program developed while he was a full-time employee. Worse yet, he has been making speeches about it, Mayo lawyers charge. Elkin countered charging that Mayo and Cerner are blocking the free flow of technology that could be used to deal with everything from threats of bio-terrorism to epidemics such as the swine flu outbreak. His lawsuit charges that another Mayo employee took an unauthorized copy of the source code for his software program and turned it over to a Mayo partner. Elkin's lawyers contend that Mayo and Cerner "want the exclusive right to sell" his software, "violating the terms of federal grants that paid Mayo millions of dollars to develop software for the public good." The court battle over the ownership of the "natural language" health care software occurs as the Obama administration has earmarked $19 billion to promote the use of electronic medical records by physicians and hospitals. Mayo and Cerner executives were recently named to a federal panel overseeing those electronic data health efforts. In Pittsburgh, Cerner has teamed up with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center on similar electronic records development efforts. UPMC became a Cerner stockholder as a result of those agreements. Elkin who left Mayo last year to accept a top health technology post at New York's Mount Sinai Medical Center, said in his lawsuit that Mayo threatened him with criminal prosecution to stop him from discussing the software at medical conferences. At issue in the lawsuit is software that can read written medical reports and diagnostic notes, then reorganize them into a clear understandable format. Both sides agree the software has great value — the dispute is over who owns it. Mayo officials declined to comment, citing the litigation, as did other parties to the lawsuit. According to court documents, Cerner purchased the rights to the disputed software for $5.7 million when it acquired a for-profit company started by Mayo. Cerner is based in Kansas City, Mo., and is a longtime partner with Mayo. According to records in the Minnesota lawsuit, Elkin, a licensed physician, began developing health records software more than 20 years ago, nearly a decade before he joined Mayo. When he left Mayo, Elkin had risen to become a full professor in Mayo's College of Medicine and director of the Laboratory of Biomedical Informatics. Mayo contends that Elkin signed over his rights to the disputed software in two installments in 2002 and 2003. "Dr. Elkin expressly assigned the results of his research to Mayo and agreed to maintain its secrecy," the lawsuit contends, adding that despite that agreement Elkin "publicly disclosed, and possibly even offered to sell the software at a national conference." Mayo and Cerner have charged the former professor with misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty. "The software that resulted from research efforts directed by Dr. Elkin under the auspices of Mayo can read and understand the text of any standard medical record," the lawsuit states, adding that "Mayo owns all the rights" to the software. Mayo and Cerner lawyers said a court injunction is necessary to protect their trade secret from being disclosed "by a once trusted, high level researcher and clinician." Elkin, through his lawyers, contends that he only assigned limited amounts of his research to Mayo, not the "natural language" software now in dispute. Elkin's lawyers said that it was through Elkin's efforts that some $7 million in private and public research grants were awarded to the software development efforts. The suit charges that Mayo cut off royalty payments that were promised and "seized source code" that he had never assigned to the clinic. He charged that Mayo has already made "millions of dollars" from the use of that source code. "Mayo has never paid a penny to Dr. Elkin from the royalties generated," the court filing said. Walter F. Roche Jr. can be reached at [email protected] or 412-320-7894. -- Ted Pedersen http://www.d.umn.edu/~tpederse ------------------------------------ Yahoo! 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