| For the record, I think it is "de minimus" and that nothing wrong was done,
partly because Java was, in fact supposed to be open and was mostly developed in
the open. If it were otherwise (e.g. if rangeCheck were part of a program
protected by trade secret), de minimus or not, someone might be facing serious
criminal prosecution, because the incontrovertible evidence is that he accessed
material from a previous job.
I was merely disagreeing with the statement
that "it would be very hard to convince anyone that it wasn't
de minimis."
I
know lots of people who are all about trade secrets, proprietary
agreements, etc., and I can tell you that the first thing those people would ask
is "why was he accessing code he wrote at a previous job?" So those particular
people would be easily convinced it wasn't de minimus. Actually, you wouldn't
have to convince them -- that would be their starting position.
Personally,
I think you can tell from how Boies and Jacobs act (remember Boies saying it was
about right and wrong?) that they hang around those types of people all the
time. It is probably inconceivable to them that 12 people on a jury
could think it might be OK for someone to reuse code they took from a previous
employer. If you want to figure out why they persist, you might consider how
the sorts of people they hang with think (you know, like the ones footing the
bill right now).
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