I wrote this a while back:
While I was at Oracle, I got an idea for how to solve a problem in the code. The manager I worked for suggested that I submit a patent for it. I had written up the solution to the problem, had sent it to him in an email and had discussed it with him, although he did not do anything other than listen to what I came up with. There were no changes to the idea based on our discussions.
I filed the patent and we had a discussion about it when the idea was accepted. I was going to list my manager on the patent application. But, he told me, very specifically that he did NOT want to be on the patent with me. He said that he had not made any contribution to it so he shouldn't be on there. He was emphatic about it. DON'T put me on the patent application.
So I didn't.
I was doing what he told me to do. But, there were then things he did after that, that seemed like he was trying to make it look like I had intentionally excluded him from the patent. He tried to make me out to be some kind of conceited person who had to have the patent all to myself.
I believe that this man intentionally did that. The patent was submitted but was never pursued. After many years nothing has happened to it. I wonder if this was some kind of sabotage.
I am the person who wrote about the design documents (below) that I kept writing to this same manager. He tells me on the phone not to work on that. Then asks me in email after a while if I am done with that yet.
This is really sick. Be careful if you are a decent honest person working in TK's org. A lot of the manager's are like this. They try to make other people out to be dishonest or something in order to get other people to join in against them.
January 27, 2018 by Anonymous | 4 reactions (+4/-0)
Post ID: @1cfsd+QfAKigt
Now, it seems clear what the plan actually was.
He gets me to file the patent with my name only.
That way, it looks like I am going rogue, that I stole the idea somewhere.
Later he asks me if I have other ideas and I say yes and he suggests that I enter descriptions for them in the system, so I did that. I entered two ideas. They were closed immediately, I don't know why.
He goes to another manager, possibly the one he acquired his skill set from, and they lie together about me, saying this manager's girlfriend talked to me on the phone and I stole her idea. They lie to the management above, then maybe someone lies to legal.
My conversation about the patent with legal was odd, I remember the lawyer talking to me about how I came up with the idea and at the end he said something like this: "so you could say that you were just in the right place at the right time, eh?" I was on the phone with him and I could tell he said that with a kind of sneer. I remember that part very clearly, as it was odd for him to say that.
A while after I filed the patent, the girlfriend calls me a couple of times on the phone asking questions about what I did. I gave her the location of the code that I wrote.
My code was already done BEFORE any phone conversation with her. The patent idea was already submitted BEFORE any phone conversation with her. If I had understood I was going to be cheated, I could have proved that. But, no one ever spoke to me and told me what I was being accused of.
Then, a few weeks later, her manager sends an email to me and my manager (who is in on the whole thing), saying she is filing a patent and they are offering to let me be part of it. How kind of them! It was really a subset of what my patent was, and I verified later that she copied over my code to do it. Not only that, but they used my text description that I had submitted for the patent and made small changes to that.
Oddly, my manager had recently made a place to share documents. I felt that I needed to put my write-up there for the patent. How odd. They had obviously taken it and modified it. It was obvious that they were copying my work, but I didn't understand that they were stealing it entirely.
Then, her manager kindly offers to have a "discussion" with me on the phone. He says something really weird. I was complaining that this woman had stolen my idea when I spoke on the phone with her. Then, he said, well someone else spoke to her on the phone and stole her idea, so maybe I should just let her have this one. I thought that was bizarre logic. I was upset. I sent an email to the oracle ethics email place to ask about what was going on, and got no response. Duh, it's Orahole!
If I had looked at the code then, it would have been obvious. But, oddly, I didn't.
My manager refused to do anything in my defense. Of course, he wouldn't, since he was in on the whole thing.
Now, I can see that my manager filed a patent with one of my other ideas that he encouraged me to file and was closed immediately by legal. I suppose he told them that I was stealing HIS idea. But that is not true. The code was already written by this time, they most likely used it in the patent he filed later under his name.
There wasn't really anything I could do to stop them. And I was under the impression that my patent was going to be processed. I was never told that this woman's patent was supposed to replace mine, which I think was the intent. Her's was finished almost immediately, while mine sat.
So, the answer to my original question is that this way my manager and his buddy's girlfriend both got patents, while I got nothing at all for my ideas. I eventually left after being forced to work with this same manager and girlfriend. They ran a much larger scam then.
At this time I told my manager I did not want to work with them, they were dishonest. That's when I finally looked at the code. It's obvious, same variable names in use, same structure. I sent that to my current manager and he ignored it. Why, because he was also part of this group of managers. I was very, very carefully handed to him when the previous manager's group was broken up. I was the only one from the previous group that was handed to this specific manager. Got to keep everything under wraps, you know.
Oddly, he convinced me to continue to write code for the manager and the girlfriend. And he convinced me to delete the file I had created showing the differences, as he said I wouldn't want them to see that on my machine... very odd that I would delete it. I was very upset at the time. His influence on me was odd.
If are a decent person with good ideas, you do not want to work at oracle. The management there is corrupt beyond belief. Get a job in a decent company. Part of the reason I was so easily taken in, is that I believed oracle was a reputable company and it did not occur to me that multiple managers were lying to me all along the way. Oracle is one huge scam machine! Get out of there!