Re: MV community lawsuits

No. TRW did sue Pick and others. Some settled. Pick's defense was, legally
if not ethically, that he had gotten tapes with GIRLS from the army (just by
filling out the right forms). The fact that he did it post facto seemed to
have been overlooked.

Fwiw, when the company that Pick first joined (known variously as General
Systems, Republic Data Systems and Ancom Systems), which is where I met him
and where we started initial development on an IBM 370, went belly-up, I
remember getting called to a discovery hearing for the bankruptcy court.
Apparently said company was spending thousands (in 1968) a week on-what are
they again-computers? and the lawyers were convinced some monkey business
was afoot.

I went along with my then girlfriend (we were shopping), not realizing it
was "important". It was the LAW. After being questioned for over two hours
and trying to explain to late-60's lawyers what computers, dataprocessing,
programming, timesharing etc was about, I could clearly see that they
thought 1) I was being completely honest or 2) I was a master dissembler and
they had to get to the truth. "You mean you personally spent $800 a week
on...what's this...timesharing charges?" "Yes" (I tried to inject a note of
levity at this point by mentioning how we programmers had IBM Selectrics
which, when used over the timeshare, could indicate every 2 seconds of cpu
time used by printing a $ sign. Blank looks. Decided not to become a
stand-up comedian). "What were you buying? Where is the product?" "Computer
time. On tapes somewhere" "Did you personally see these...'tapes'?" "No,
they're probably in a closet somewhere" etc.

Early on they asked me who the woman with me was, was she my lawyer? I said
no, my girlfriend. We were shopping downtown before we came in. "You mean
you and your girlfriend sort of just decided to drop in to this deposition?"
"Yes, pretty much"...Never heard from them again, guess they decided on 1).

Of course, the facts were that Pick and Morrison, his boss, went on to
continue the Microdata 800 development in Morrrison's house, so the lawyers
may have had a point...otoh, I believe Morrison covered himself by buying
some tapes and equipment from the bankruptcy court, which still did not know
what they had, so again, legally if not ethically, they were probably in the
clear.

btw, what's with Tony and others being shy about commenting about lawsuits?
Last I looked, we are under American jurisprudence, where unless there's a
court gag order, you're pretty much free to comment on most anything (well,
maybe not with the &*(& Patriot 2, but don't get me started). The law on
libel ain't as restrictive as it is in that well-known backward
(legalistically) country across the pond. And who would care anyway? We're
hardly commenting on earth-shaking stuff.

Chandru Murthi

"dawn" <dawnwolthuis@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1133801817.207551.174620@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> murthi wrote:
>> "dawn" <dawnwolthuis@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:1133541189.732904.313980@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> >
>> > murthi wrote:
>> >> Can't take credit for AQL, sorry.
>> >>
>> >> The original GIM/GIRLS specification contained a comprehensive and
>> >> complete
>> >> updating specification. Not surprisingly, the AQL verbs were ADD,
>> >> DELETE
>> >> and
>> >> CHANGE. It was a precursor of the SQL in its capabilities. This was
>> >> implemented by the original Pick group (Pick, Earl, and 2 others whose
>> >> names
>> >> I forget) at TRW, "inherited" by Pick Systems on the qt (actually it
>> >> was,
>> >> and still is, all in the public domain, courtesy of the US Army since
>> >> it
>> >> was
>> >> taxpayer funded).
>> >
>> > Somehow I don't think that all software written by any company today
>> > for the US Army or any other government entity is automatically in the
>> > public domain. Software laws have perhaps changed slightly in the past
>> > four decades?
>> >
>> It was 1968. Was in public domain. Probably still is. TRW did not file
>> appropriate papers to ensure copyright belonged to them. Chandru
>
> Ah, OK. They still sued Pick for something and he ended up paying them
> some dollars IIRC. I couldn't find any information on that lawsuit,
> although I did get some information from you or others a couple of
> years ago. If you or anyone has information on that one, I'm all ears.
>
> If anyone knows how to look up lawsuits (I'll have to stop by a law
> library some day), please pass along anything you know about the
> TRW-Pick lawsuit (or the Microdata-Pick lawsuit, or any of the others).
> Is the lawyer who pressed for so many of these from Pick Systems still
> living?
>
> thanks. --dawn
>


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Lawyers - Why Do People Hate Them?
    ... Rich Piehl wrote in ... Technically, you are incorrect, I have never practiced law, I am not ... Note the number of ads and commercials by lawyers ... File a lawsuit today and it ...
    (misc.transport.road)
  • Re: Legal Abuse Syndrome (LAS)
    ... Professor of Law, Yale University ... "Woe unto you, lawyers! ... V - No Tax on Max ... multi-syllabic legal language, in the case of Carter against the Carter Coal ...
    (misc.legal)
  • Re: Legal Abuse Syndrome (LAS)
    ... Professor of Law, Yale University ... "Woe unto you, lawyers! ... V - No Tax on Max ... multi-syllabic legal language, in the case of Carter against the Carter Coal ...
    (misc.legal)
  • Re: inverted 6-pin 1394 cable can fry cam
    ... "Rich" connotes large amounts of discretionary income. ... I have the luxory of defining rich as "having more money than me". ... We see how much we have to pay lawyers, ... > that the DMCA is very, very bad law and, possibly, even unconstitutional. ...
    (rec.video.production)
  • Re: arc in a closed tube loop
    ... | gained great respect for the U.S. civil law and also lawyers ... Patent lawyers, more than most, do need more technical savvy. ... | know about the invention. ...
    (sci.engr.lighting)
Loading