Comment Re:Ok, is this IP infringement? (Score 1) 99
Did you RTFA? Nowhere does the author state explicitly anywhere that Google saw or requested internal demos of Morfik's product. From TFA:
Where in that statement does it actually say that Google definitively saw confidential Morfik WebOS demos? Further, from the press release quoted in TFA:The press release seems to imply that Google may've infringed on Morfik's IP. (emphasis mine)
Again, show me where in that paragraph it actually states that Google was definitively listed as one who asked for an internal, confidential demonstration of Morfik's software. Further, may I point you to Google's public policy on corporate secrets from Google's Code of Conduct:In October 2005 Morfik's JST was featured at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, California and immediately attracted the attention of leading search engine providers and software development organizations, including founders and top officers from some very large companies. In a number of instances, persons recognizing the potential in the JST innovation and its implications for their own organization's applications requested special more detailed presentations to their engineers or gained access to additional confidential information about JST.
Perhaps we should be looking at a wider issue here instead of dumping FUD every chance we get: both Google's GWT and Morfik's JST are doing something that has been done for ages upon ages. Remember a2p? p2c? gcc? All of these programs translate from a human-readable language to another human-readable language for a machine to read again (yes, even GCC has an intermediate language it uses to perform optimization techniques with). There's so much prior art here that it's insane for the patent office to even consider allowing their patent through in the first place.d. Competitors' Information
The level of business ethics to which we aspire means applying the same rules to our competitors' information as we do to our own, and that we treat our competitors as we hope they will treat us. We respect our competitors and above all else believe in fair play in all circumstances; we would no sooner use a competitor's confidential information to our advantage than we would wish them to use ours. So, although gathering publicly available information about competitors is certainly a legitimate part of business competition, you should not seek out our competitors' confidential information or seek to use it if it comes into your possession. The same goes for confidential information belonging to any former employer of yours. If an opportunity arises to take advantage of competitors' confidential information, remember: don't be evil. We compete, but we don't cheat. (emphasis mine)