<story><title>Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview</title><url>https://patentpandas.org/stories/company-patented-my-idea</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pmarreck</author><text>This is a level of douchiness I cannot fathom. What possesses these people to act in this fashion and how do they sleep at night? How is this not seen as clearly unethical behavior? A clear violation of Wheaton&amp;#x27;s Law, here.&lt;p&gt;I mean... I could easily take that lollipop from that naïve baby in that baby carriage... but I don&amp;#x27;t, simply because I&amp;#x27;m Not A Dick™.&lt;p&gt;Did all of Silicon Valley get the wrong takeaway from the Apple&amp;#x2F;Xerox thing, or something?</text></item><item><author>paul7986</author><text>I met&amp;#x2F;had a similar experience with Google ATAP in 2013 (was Motorala ATAP then; Google recently bought them) though not for a job interview but to discuss working together to build our tech SpeakerBlast into the Moto X.&lt;p&gt;They asked if we ever thought about selling our technology to them before the meeting and at the meeting they baited us for how our tech worked saying we&amp;#x27;d like to work with you tell us how it works.  Once we did they left the room (Dugan&amp;#x27;s 2nd right hand man at the time and another) &amp;amp; 3 minutes later showed us the door saying the &amp;quot;race is on.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;They have since been awarded patents for audio syncing across phones.&lt;p&gt;Many here will say that&amp;#x27;s just how Silicon Valley works.... takes advantage and stomps on the little guy innovators &amp;amp; their dreams.  That&amp;#x27;s not professional and I met with many other companies like Samsung who acted with the utmost respect &amp;amp; professionalism towards us.  Yet, Google whose motto is &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t Be Evil,&amp;quot; can&amp;#x27;t act in the same fashion?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mindslight</author><text>Why do people carry out muggings? Because they gain from it. Morality and legality aren&amp;#x27;t just divergent - they&amp;#x27;re &lt;i&gt;orthogonal&lt;/i&gt;. Just like one can perform moral and immoral actions in physical space, one can perform moral or immoral actions using the legal system. Despite the goal of the legal system being to punish immoral behavior, being able to actually formalize that is up against the limit of complexity - as soon as rules are made to discourage bad behavior, the lawful bad actors move on to using those very laws to carry out attacks.&lt;p&gt;A major meta problem in the current system is that even when bad behavior is able to be formally judged and is called out, there is still little downside for getting caught. Under a functioning legal system, Google would have to make OP whole for their time&amp;#x2F;stress&amp;#x2F;legalfees&amp;#x2F;etc incurred, and would therefore be discouraged from attacking again. Alas.&lt;p&gt;The individuals have no problem sleeping at night because there is no shortage of narratives to pick from to justify their actions - then further normalized by their peer group engaging in similar business. Nobody sees themselves as a bad person.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview</title><url>https://patentpandas.org/stories/company-patented-my-idea</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pmarreck</author><text>This is a level of douchiness I cannot fathom. What possesses these people to act in this fashion and how do they sleep at night? How is this not seen as clearly unethical behavior? A clear violation of Wheaton&amp;#x27;s Law, here.&lt;p&gt;I mean... I could easily take that lollipop from that naïve baby in that baby carriage... but I don&amp;#x27;t, simply because I&amp;#x27;m Not A Dick™.&lt;p&gt;Did all of Silicon Valley get the wrong takeaway from the Apple&amp;#x2F;Xerox thing, or something?</text></item><item><author>paul7986</author><text>I met&amp;#x2F;had a similar experience with Google ATAP in 2013 (was Motorala ATAP then; Google recently bought them) though not for a job interview but to discuss working together to build our tech SpeakerBlast into the Moto X.&lt;p&gt;They asked if we ever thought about selling our technology to them before the meeting and at the meeting they baited us for how our tech worked saying we&amp;#x27;d like to work with you tell us how it works.  Once we did they left the room (Dugan&amp;#x27;s 2nd right hand man at the time and another) &amp;amp; 3 minutes later showed us the door saying the &amp;quot;race is on.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;They have since been awarded patents for audio syncing across phones.&lt;p&gt;Many here will say that&amp;#x27;s just how Silicon Valley works.... takes advantage and stomps on the little guy innovators &amp;amp; their dreams.  That&amp;#x27;s not professional and I met with many other companies like Samsung who acted with the utmost respect &amp;amp; professionalism towards us.  Yet, Google whose motto is &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t Be Evil,&amp;quot; can&amp;#x27;t act in the same fashion?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>everyone</author><text>Why do elite decision makers, CEO&amp;#x27;s, boards of directors, make decisions that will certainly have adverse effects, that will literally &lt;i&gt;kill&lt;/i&gt; people (eg. Trafigura), just to make more profit? Despite the fact that they are all already individually multi-millionaires and could not really materially improve their lives with more money?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve ruminated on this.&lt;p&gt;I think the only reason that could explain such excess is competitiveness. To them, it is like a game. Its not about getting another yacht, its about beating the &lt;i&gt;other&lt;/i&gt; guy. I think its the same mechanism that will drive someone to grind for many hours in an MMO or suchlike.</text></comment>