Re: Jim R's filed motions

[Jim Rojas <jrojas+tech-man.com>]

Thats entirely different. The original author can sign his legal rights
away to whomever hired him to do the ghostwriting.

Brinks: Can you make me a panel that does this and that? It doesn't make
it your copyrighted work if you didn't design the circuitry.

I searched the patent office. Brinks has nothing on file other that a
stupid block diagram which explains what a their keypad does. There are
no PC board diagrams on file, or anything truly technical in that
respect. All they did was patent an explanation on how their keypad
works. Their patent clearly described how most keypads work. What makes
their explanation any different from other keypads remains a mystery.

Honeywell clearly designed, and manufactured the panel. Honeywell holds
the copyright to the panel design and its documentation. Brinks merely
contracted Honeywell to build them a panel based on Honeywell's existing
panel designs. Honeywell would have been stupid to give up these legal
rights. This would then given Brinks legal rights to the rest of
Honeywell's product lines.

If you painted the keypad bright pink, can Brinks claim copyrights on
that as well? No. The only thing Brinks can claim as their intellectual
property is the firmware, which is under license from Honeywell who made
it for them.

Brinks should have purchased an overseas manufacturer and had an
electrical engineer build them one from scratch. The engineer can then
give up his legal rights to the panel and firmware, then Brinks would
have a panel line that they can truly claim as their own. But that would
cost many millions of dollars.

Since Brinks' future in this industry is still in question, it was
easier to get a huge manufacturer like Honeywell to whip something up.

Lets say if Honeywell elects not to manufacture this OEM panel for
Brinks after their contract is fulfilled, what then? Brinks can't just
take the designs and try to get GE Interlogix or Napco to continue to
make it for them. That's because Honeywell retains full design and
manufacturing rights. That is why you see Copyright Intellisense or
Honeywell on the equipment, programmers, and documentation.

Jim Rojas




Crash Gordon wrote:
> I don't think it matters if someone else made the panel for them. If I hire
> someone to write a book for me about something I want them to write (work
> for hire) the copyright is mine - the author just gets paid a wage no
> royalties no copyrights or whatever is stipulated in my contract with the
> author.
>