[ILUG] looking for Linux software people

[Jonathan barry]

NO  Lawyer but have worked with Tech M&A long enough to know what the law
has tests for  FAIR and Reasonable :)


 Actually the law does have a concept of Fair and or Reasonable and there is
law to cover it on the at least the UK statute books,BTW a Judge or Lawyers
view of fair and the man in the streets view may not be one and the same,
perhaps that¹s what Silent P was getting at.

Unfair Contract Terms Act , the background to that law and its review is
described on one legal web site as

"Without adequate legal controls there is a risk that contract terms will be
unfair to one party, whether the contract is between a business and a
consumer or between two businesses dealing on one party's standard terms."

And the UK DTI has a web page on the Fair and reasonable test for contract
regulations 

http://www.dti.gov.uk/access/unfair/annex1.htm




On 30/12/2002 09:37, "Silent Partner" <sp at silentpartner.cx> wrote:

> On Monday, Dec 30, 2002, Gavin Henrick wrote:
> 
>> /me did Commercial Contract Law when studying for a post grad dip.
>> (I am not a lawyer though)
>> 
>> It is down to what is seen as fair by the courts, which will
>> historically allow for some restriction but it will probably (at a
>> guess) be short timespan.
> 
> No disrespect to you or your educators, but that is complete BS.
> Courts apply law, the letter of the law, period. What is fair or
> otherwise does not come into it. You get law in a court, not justice.
> Again, IANAL, but I have been through the courts system enough times
> to work this one out, and have been advised of this by my lawyer on
> each occasion.
> 
> Where a judge can apply fairness is in the imposition of a sentence or
> requirement on the defeated party, that is usually at his own
> discretion (with guidelines from the law), but legally challengable
> through appeals to enforce it to be brought into line with law. The
> establishment of which party should be defeated is always done 100% in
> accordance with law, be that contract law or the law of the land.
> Fairness, or the fairness opinions of a single person are not brought
> into proceedings, thats what keeps the court system relatively clean
> and even handed.
> 
> If you, in a legally binding fashion, sign yourself up to give the
> boss a BJ every morning, then that is your legal responsibility to him
> irregadless of it being fair or not in the context of your employment
> by him as a linux developer. You had a fair chance not to sign the
> legally binding document or to sign it in a manner that was not
> legally binding (which can usually be had by keeping your mouth shut,
> random pen strokes at clause numbers, and signing on the spot without
> question, chances are your rights have been infringed).
> 
> Its not just a matter of having a signed doc from someone, the manner
> in which the signed document was obtained has bearings on its
> legality. You do have rights, and you should always endeavour to have
> them infringed so that you dont have to worry about what you've just
> signed, and work on ethically. Signing quickly before they can comply
> with their lawyers request to advise you to have a lawyer look over
> the doc before signing will get you out of all NDA's, according to my
> lawyer. If you are presenting an NDA, present it, but dont let go of
> the physical doc until you have explained the signors rights to them.
> 
>> But this is completely different to the use of private art
> (copyright)
>> which has its own substantial set of laws and is not so simple.
>> copyright exists from the moment something is written, so if you
> write
>> something completely "new" for a company as part of your
> work/contract
>> for them, they own it unless your contract states otherwise. Not
> really
>> grey here :)
> 
> I think the grey area issue being debated is if the company owns the
> know-how that you developed under their employment to create that
> copyrighted piece of work.
> 
> On this issue, I would take an ethical stance, and if my employer was
> in the business of writing and selling an MTA, then while I am
> expected to have built up a collection of experience with this
> employer, I should not be able to enable this employers opposition to
> create a comparable / better MTA system with the experience I have
> gained. However, as this experience relates to specific coding
> problems, I should be able to take my key MTA experience and apply it
> to a peer to peer music distribution network problem if that was what
> my new employer required, and if so doing, did not decrease the market
> share of my original employer.
> 
> In short, don't be the babysitter who beats the kids, and if you're in
> the employment game, don't be the guy who f$#ks the babysitter. Keep
> it clean and fair children, then you are unlikely to be challenged and
> should have little to worry about.
> 
> SP