re: Jasmine Worker Accused of Trade TheftAnd there were only two Indians in the Richardson, TX office and me? I am from California.. Nortel backed out because they didn't have the cash, plain and simple.
re: Jasmine Worker Accused of Trade TheftThis is a criminal case, not a civil case (People v. the guy, not Jasmine v. the guy). If you comit a crime, the government will go after you, you don't need the victim to sue you.
re: Jasmine Worker Accused of Trade TheftJasmine shut down in 2002, apparently felled by a dependence on Nortel Networks Corp. (NYSE/Toronto: NT - message board) business that never surfaced (see Jasmine Networks: Disconnected ). ------------- They were felled by having a product that nobody ever wanted.
I don't understand why anyone is even bothering with a case like this. The company is gone. Its assets are worthless. At best, they should have just sold the rights to what was stolen for a tiny bit of money and forgot the whole thing.
re: Jasmine Worker Accused of Trade TheftIf you comit a crime, the government will go after you, you don't need the victim to sue you. ============== But the government rarely goes after cases like this unless:
1) its visible and important for some reason.
2) Someone with influence strongly wants it to be pursued.
The reason these cases don't usually happen (criminal trade secret) is that they are expensive for the prosecutors to do and many people think that trade secrets are better handled as a civil manner anyway.
Most of the times I've heard of criminal trade secret cases happening, it usually seemed that they were brought because a company or its lawyers had a whole lot of influence on the local courts.
re: Jasmine Worker Accused of Trade Theftlahlah quoted the law:
This is a criminal case, not a civil case (People v. the guy, not Jasmine v. the guy). If you comit a crime, the government will go after you, you don't need the victim to sue you.
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Sorry lahlah but there is law and then there is justice. Based on the information that we have, I agree with Skeptic. It's just so much water under the bridge. As I understand the law, to be guilty you need two things to happen:
1. You need to have taken proprietary information. Seems to be little question that this point is valid.
2. You need to have the intent of defrauding or otherwise damaging the company that you took the information from. If that was the case, everyone who switched jobs should have their memories erased by the trademark police.
I am willing to bet that there is some personality conflict behind all this. Some Jasmine founder has his/her underwear in a knot because their company failed and is looking for scapegoats and/or people to torture that may have disagreed with them in the past.
The whole case sounds like a waste of time and money for the courts. Hopefully it will be thrown out quickly.
re: Jasmine Worker Accused of Trade TheftI have a different perspective on this. I have heard many cases in silicon valley of people casually taking code from their former employers, and putting it to use in their new job. Stolen code like this goes into even well-funded companies.
I don't know the situation with Jasmine, but when someone gets caught doing it, is it wrong to prosecute them?
"Coolcom" was the name of the company some ex-Jasminites formed to cut a deal with Marvell, while Marvell was in negotiations with Jasmine for the acquisition of Jasmine's ASIC business.
re: Jasmine Worker Accused of Trade TheftI agree, this is a waste of time. Jasmine was an unbelievably stupid company run by absolute bafoons.
Jasmine was a science project run by third rate jokers, backers were checked out, no one executed to a plan no one would ever buy into anyway, there was absolutely nothing but hype in the place (a la Nortel), etc. So you'd think: who cares what the employees did with the so called assets? There weren't any real assets.
But there's a disturbing trend going on. People are looting startups because they're bitter, or they think they're entitled, or whatever. The heck with that sentiment. Regardless of the value of a failing startup, people who steal assets need to be dealt with harshly. I say, sue the heck out of this guy if he's guilty and make an example out of him.
re: Jasmine Worker Accused of Trade Theftwilecoyote wrote: But there's a disturbing trend going on. People are looting startups because they're bitter, or they think they're entitled, or whatever. The heck with that sentiment. Regardless of the value of a failing startup, people who steal assetsneed to be dealt with harshly. I say, sue the heck out of this guy if he's guilty and make an example out of him.
Perhaps these prosecutors, and elsewhere, could kindly provide a tip line, so that the countless other rip-off jobs, and startups, and scams, can be "whistle blown". To think that this is the only example really is understatement.
Nortel backed out because they didn't have the cash, plain and simple.