"Well, I've been working so hard on my Galveston project, that I'm behind three days in writing this Thoughtlet. I got a disappointing e-mail regarding my Galveston project this afternoon, and so I guess I will worry about adding to the Galveston material after catching up on the Thoughtlet. Although it is from next week, I will include the e-mail and my response here as an introduction to my thoughts about IP, or Intellectual Property Rights. Dr. Bowen Loftin sent me an e-mail which said:
I responded with:
Having grown up on the farm, when I went into the real world I did not really know what IP or the words Intellectual Property meant. However, on my first day of work at Mobil, when I was given the 'normal' set of new employee papers to sign. These papers included a patent release form, which among other things conveyed all IP rights to everything I would ever think, whether at home or at the office, while working at Mobil, to Mobil. I refused to sign the papers. I did not need a lawyer to tell me this was giving up important rights. And after all, I had detailed plans for an interactive 3-D seismic interpretation system, which I had drawn up while a student at the University of Houston.
I was not very popular when I got home that night and told Marti I might not have a job the next day. She was, after all, 4 months pregnant with Roice (we had consciously decided to have our first baby without insurance), and I've learned security is more important to women than to me. Bill Ayres was the HR person who hired me and who I told I would not sign the papers. He had never had anything like this happen before, especially by someone who had been given 3 raises between the time I accepted the position and when I reported to work.
The next day he arranged for me to meet with Bill Ruhle, who was the Chief Technical Geophysicist. Dr. Ruhle questioned me, decided I didn't know much, and told me to go read all back issues of Geophysics and come back and talk to him after I learned what Geophysics is all about. Then he arranged for me to meet with Bob Peacock, the President of Mobil ESC (Exploration Services Center). Bob is a wonderful man. His Dad was one of the early pioneers of geophysics. His brother, Elwin, is an active member of the GSH (Geophysical Society of Houston), and I see him fairly regularly at conventions. Bob listed patiently to me, then he said, 'Roice, just sign the paper. Try to get your ideas implemented inside Mobil, and if you can't, leave the company and do it outside Mobil.'
Looking back I see the depth of wisdom in this advice. First, he knew how hard it would be to get anything new developed inside an oil company. Second, he knew this would meet our immediate needs, especially with a new baby coming. And third, he taught me a most important lesson: 'Jobs are not eternal commitments!' Between allergies and the Federal Government shutting down Nelson Meat Packing Plant, I had to leave the farm. However, it was my understanding that when you took a job, it was for the rest of your life. So this advice turned my whole world upside down. I did not have to work for Mobil for the rest of my life! Although, as I look at friends who stayed at Mobil, and who are retiring with very nice savings accounts, I have wondered if I would not have been better off to have stayed at Mobil. Anyway, that is not my nature. It is my nature to invent and be an entrepreneur.
After I signed the patent release form, giving Mobil my IP, either Bill Ruhle or Bob Peacock arranged for me to visit DRL (Duncanville Research Lab). At Mobil's research lab I met Will Gray, who recently passed away (../0545.html), and Tom Hearst (../9945.html), who became life-long friends and advocates. Tom ended up going to work for Landmark, and both of them were always very complementary of those first discussions back in the summer of 1974.
An interesting irony is that Bob Peacock was later the manager of Mobil Producing Norway. This was when we started marketing Landmark into Norway. He ended up signing off on purchasing several workstations, and this became our second international workstation account after Shell. To provide some context, Landmark received initial funding in December of 1982 (Rob was born in November, just before I left the University of Houston and our insurance). The summer of 1983 Marti and I went to support the EAEG in Oslo, Norway, where I renewed contacts with Mobil Norway. The summer of 1984 the EAEG was in London. Following the convention we took two Landmark III Workstations and put them in the basement of the Sheriton Park Tower in Knightsbridge, which happened to be in part of my last proselyting area when I was on my mission. In ../0324.html I described how a bet made during the first break at this school, sponsored by IHRDC, became the basis of the Shell corporate license of Landmark technology. The summer of 1985 the EAEG (now EAGE) was in Budapest. Mobil was making their corporate decision as to which workstation to purchase based on what was shown behind the Iron Curtain at this convention. However, I think we won the account because Bob Peacock helped write the history of Landmark with his advice in the summer of 1974.
When we were working with the Venture Capitalists to fund Landmark Graphics, I told this story. The Venture Capitalists then went to Mobil and got a copy of their Patent Release form to make sure there was no IP conflict with Mobil, and that Mobil had no rights to the Landmark technologies. I never signed an employment agreement at Landmark, nor HyperMedia, nor Walden 3-D, nor The Bureau of Economic Geology, nor Continuum Resources, nor Dynamic Resources, nor Geophysical Development Corporation. Partly because I was a co-founder of most of these companies, and mostly because of my experience with Mobil Oil and the IP release they wanted me to sign. This is a big deal, if you have any creativity. It needs to be addressed on the front-end of any big project.
And IP isn't just tied to patentable products or processes. It is also tied to integrity and to making sure the facts are straight. Along this line, I receive the following e-mail from Paul on Monday:
Monday was President's Day, and since July 4th is on a Wednesday this year, it was a company holiday. I spent the day working on my Galveston Futures project.
At the office, first thing on Tuesday morning, I was talking to Les, and Fred Hilterman came in to tell us about his Grandson Andrew Smith (Scott Smith's son). One never knows when Fred is pulling your leg. He claims Andrew skipped two grades, and at age 12 is in 8th grade, and has completed college calculus. He gave Les and I an example of how smart he is, as summarized on the drawing below: 
Fred was taking him to NASA for the day. I asked if Fred was just going to the visitors center, or if he would like me to get a pass into the main campus to meet some of the folks I know down there. Then I realized it was probably too late to arrange for this the same day they are visiting. Fred had forgot about the work I did at NASA when I worked for him at the Seismic Acoustics Lab, and did not know I have kept up connections since then. He certainly did not know about my yet unexecuted Robonat license (../0319.html, ../0325.html, and ../0521.html). The reason it is unexecuted is NASA is still getting a clean agreement on all of the IP that comprises Robonaut.
At 11:00 I drove Les Denham to the GSH luncheon out by Sam LeRoy's office. I had no emotional issues attending this month. Maybe my phobia has passed. I sat down and several folks I know sat by me. I did learn my emotional reaction warning antenna is still working well beyond full capacity. The last person to sit at our table was Scott Singleton of Rock Solid Images. I introduced myself, and he said, 'Oh, I certainly know you!' I responded, 'What have I done to you!' He said, 'Nothing!' I responded, 'A few years ago I met someone at a meeting like this and when he heard my name he said, 'You son-of-a-bitch, you are responsible for me loosing my job!' The guy on my left said, 'Did he really say that!' I replied, 'Yes!' Then Scott said, 'You didn't do anything to me. However, I worked for Energy Innovations before you came in and it became Continuum Resources. I didn't stay with Energy Innovations, and I did keep up with all of the guys who used to work with me. It was a good thing I didn't go to Continuum Resources.' Sometimes I wish I would not have gone to work with Jeff Hume and company. Oh well! Unanticipated consequences of independent decisions! Les did an outstanding job on his presentation on predicting the probability of oil, gas, fizz gas, dead oil (no gas), or water) based on the GDC well log data base. This presentation turned out to be the official unveiling of the new Geokinetics web site, which allows folks to order well log data and specifically A/B probability of gas for a particular location plots using their credit card (see http://www.geodev.com/ab, if you want to spend some money on geophysical results). I went over to Sam LeRoy's office to see some of the geopressure cell work he has recently completed. I also told him about my conversation with Dave Johnson last Thursday (0707.html). I do appreciate Sam's support and ideas.
Wednesday Fred came in and said he spent 6 hours at NASA yon Tuesday. He saw Robonaut, and it was not working. One of his IP stories was his grandson told him 'There are 1 0 people, those who read binary, and those who don't.' Then he said his Grandson asked him if he wanted him to write out his name for him in binary. As far as work went, it was very slow. Because of the gather file that was corrupted when Mike was cleaning up files, I was no hold, and there were no velocities for me to pick. I chose to interpret this as divine intervention, and to use the time to build the TimedexSM for Galveston Futures.
Wednesday evening Paul and Rob came to visit. Paul has an assignment to work for Boeing at NASA for several weeks, and will be down here a few times. It was fun listening to him talk about big companies and how the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, and if they had their IP in order, there would not be near as much consulting work for Paul's company. Paul was driving a red Volkswagon Beetle Convertible. So we had to go out to get ice cream. Everyone had a small toffee blizzard at Dairy Queen, since Maggie Moo's was closed. We also drove down Baker Road past the pig races. It was fun. Wish we saw more of Rob. Wish we saw more of all 10 of you. Oh well.
Friday we received copies of the Geokinetics Employee Handbook. It was full of IP restrictions. For instance, page 14 includes the phrase:
And on page 16 says:
And:
Needless to say I was not pleased to see this type of change. Fred was also very upset. And later I found out most of the programmers just refused to sign the paper acknowledging receipt of and reading of the Employee Handbook. Richard Verm picked his up when I did, and he just signed the adknowledgement. I read the entire document before I signed it, and I corrected the signing page because they had the word 'date' instead of the word 'data.' I followed up signing it by inviting Mike Dunn into my office for a conversation, which I recorded (see http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets/2007/images/070224_Mike_Dunn_IP.MPG). Because this is important, and in case I need confirmation of when this was done, I'm making it available to those of you who read these Thoughtlets. Transcripting the short video, it says:
Of course, I do not expect this to ever go to court. Just like it was impossible for Mobil to implement a new idea about interactive 3-D seismic interpretation, Geokinetics is in a growth and consolidation mode, and they do not have time to worry about this type of stuff. However, it is too important not to bring up on the front end of any important project.Of course, I do not expect this to ever go to court. Just like it was impossible for Mobil to implement a new idea about interactive 3-D seismic interpretation, Geokinetics is in a growth and consolidation mode, and they do not have time to worry about this type of stuff. However, it is too important not to bring up on the front end of any important project.
iFor instance, Slide 3 of my Galveston Futures document reads:
Furthermore, Slide 188 says:
It will be particularly interesting to me to see how the IP rights develop as the discussions on Galveston Futures proceed. I certainly have put a lot of work in on my presentation. It ended up being 375 slides in length, with about 1,500 web pages for indexing. And I do not even have a computer data base tied into the project yet, mostly because Marc Roulston's Mother passed away (she was 84), and he has been out of pocket for a couple of weeks.
Saturday evening, 24 Feb 2007, Andrea and I went to the Adult Session of Stake Conference. Interesting, and I've been around a long time, so things start to sound like I've heard them before. I did write two possible stanzas for Prime Words, based on talks by Gwen Anderson (a) and Coleen Anderson (b):
Sunday morning at 10:00 was Stake Conference. Jeff Jurinak, my High Priest Quorum Group Leader, asked me to help with parking cars. Andrea and I were at the church at 9:00, and we parked around the corner so we did not take up a parking space. I was placed at the front entrance, the first person everyone saw as they drove in. I just waved and smiled. It was interesting to watch lines and lines and lines of cars to into the Catholic parking lot across the street. Then to see cars dribble into Stake Conference. Definitely a lot more Catholics than Mormons in Katy. And this was only comparing one Mass with Stake Conference. It was fun to see people wave and smile at me. Sunday afternoon we went to Choir Practice, and in the evening I Home Taught the Minor's. I enjoy sining for them, and they enjoy having me sing. It is mutually beneficial, and it doesn't involve IP."