From:
Sent: Friday, June 02, 2000 6:08 PM
To: Ed Lazowska
Subject: ms employee agreement addendum


Here's another story about a problem caused by the MS employee agreement:

X is an undergraduate here who's been working with me on the
work that we've been doing at UW that's related to our joint
work with MSR.  MSR is very
aware of our work and we're very careful to be clear with them what's MS's
anticipated business and research interests to make sure we don't have a
conflict.

X is doing an internship this summer in the Microsoft NetDocs product
development group.  He's already signed the employee agreement.  However,
he was planning to continue to work with me on the weekends on the UW
projects.  However, by the employee agreement, he can't, because it
produces an ownership conflict between Microsoft and the University.  So
now not only have I lost the benefit of his input on my work, but he can't
continue working on the stuff he's developed.

Furthermore, I can't have him in on any meetings I might have at MSR
over the summer on our ongoing collaboration, because even though I'm
still covered by the nondisclosure of what I learned while I was there,
and X would be by the agreement he signed, if he were to hear of any
proprietary material, then when he comes back he couldn't continue to work
on our project until a year had elapsed, by which time he'll have
graduated.