one thing I ought to add to this is that the practice of emailing yourself a copy of your work when you move jobs is absolutely rife in the industry, from spreadsheet models to client lists - I have never actually done it myself but am regarded as being some sort of weird monklike character for not doing so - and although technically illegal under the noncompetes and relevant employment law, is almost never chased up by the employers (on the basis that we are all grownups who know that our paths will cross again in the future so no point bringing the lawyers in). This must have been a really egregious case for GS to act as they did.
best dd -----Original Message----- From: "[email protected]" [[email protected]] Date: 07/09/2009 04:57 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Re: Employee emulates thieving employer this is a very very grey area that up until now nobody in the industry has wanted to explore. In general, *algorithms* are pieces of mathematics which can't be patented. You can, usually, get around this by getting a *software* patent, where you file for a patent on "a device consisting of a computer and software, the software capable of doing bla bla bla". But the financial industry doesn't do this, out of the assumption that by the time you got round to filing the patent, the algorithms would be outdated. The way banks usually protect their algo systems is as "trade secrets" by a) making the developers sign really really aggressive non-disclosure agreements (which this guy pretty certainly broke, which is the crime he's done) and b) stuffing their mouths with dollar bills - if anyone's looking for an example to illustrate clasroom discussions of the efficiency wage, this is a great one. So Doug's right that this stuff is protected, but it's protected by employment law more than by IP law. . If anyone's interested in the question of "what are these algorithms anyway", this is a good white paper on the general subject of algo trading. http://www.themistrading.com/article_files/0000/0348/Toxic_Equity_Trading_on_Wall_Street_12-17-08.pdf best dd -----Original Message----- From: "Doug Henwood" [[email protected]] Date: 07/07/2009 11:14 AM I'm no lawyer, but trading algorithms must be protected under IP law, no?) _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
