In April 1997, DSC Communications of Plano, Texas, filed a lawsuit against ex-employee Evan Brown, to force Brown to give up a thought in his head!
DSC had fired Brown for allegedly not holding up his end of a contract that gives the company the right to any idea Brown came up with for a ten year period. Brown says he had an idea for upgrading old computer code into a higher-level code, but has not written it down and refuses to reveal it. The idea, potentially worth millions of dollars, remains where it was born, in his head.
The idea that Brown has is for an automated computer conversion of machine executable binary code into portable high level programming source code. It would aid companies that have old computer programs where the original source code has either been lost or the cost to re-write them is too expensive. Most large businesses' computer programs, that have been developed over the past 30 years, will only run on big mainframe computers. Many of these companies would love to run their programs on new, cheaper PCs but don't have the resources to manually convert the old computer programs.
Brown claims DSC has no right to his idea because he developed it on his own time, never wrote it down and it has no bearing on the telecommunications sector. Brown was employed by DSC Communications to provide technical support for the Cellular Division software testing group, not software development or software reverse engineering.
In June 1997, a federal judge ordered Brown to hand over the idea to DSC. Brown refused.
Both parties have filed briefs with the court of appeals and all that remains now is for the court to rule on the issues presented. The last filing was Jan 5, 2004 and it may be months before the court rules.
Stranger than Fiction Magazine is your premier source for tales of the bizarre and extraordinary. Published quarterly. Established 2004.
Summer 2004 issue (here)
