[HN Gopher] Delta pilot sues the airline for allegedly stealing ...
___________________________________________________________________
Delta pilot sues the airline for allegedly stealing an app he
designed
Author : rexreed
Score : 152 points
Date : 2021-07-15 13:16 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.engadget.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.engadget.com)
| relaunched wrote:
| I've known many entrepreneurs who have jumped to the conclusion
| that their idea was stolen based on the problem they are trying
| to solve. Then, they see similarities in the design that
| reinforce their confirmation bias.
|
| The article talks about this huge problem...the genesis of his
| idea was this problem that 100s of people, in the airline
| industry, at Delta, all faced - including their technical teams,
| operations leadership, executives, etc. With all of those folks
| facing the same problem, it's not unexpected that some come with
| the same general solution. Practically speaking, whether it was
| the pilot or the technical team at Delta, anyone building a chat
| solution would be familiar with the same chat UIs; at some level,
| when have any of us used an app that had a truly unique design?
| Many would argue that the UX best practice is to use familiar
| elements, from popular apps, so not to have to re-educate the
| user.
|
| That doesn't mean they didn't steal the app. However, in my
| experience, people with all sorts of ideas hit up executives at
| big companies all the time. That repetition is the basis for
| brand marketing. It's likely they were pitched a similar solution
| to that same problem both before and after that person met with
| their team.
|
| Barring some egregious fraud, not mentioned in the article, or
| some major bad acting, it seems like a hard argument to make.
| erhk wrote:
| But how often do executives have multiple meetings to entertain
| ideas?
| sangnoir wrote:
| How many other meetings did they have to evaluate equivalent
| solutions? It's unlikely his was the only solution being
| entertained.
| giarc wrote:
| "The plaintiff has been with the airline for 11 years and still
| currently works with the company."
|
| Suing your employer for $1 billion, bold strategy cotton. I
| suspect he's about to get a lot of the less desirable route
| assignments.
| throwawaycities wrote:
| I doubt it unless Delta wants to defend an additional count of
| retaliation.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Nope, it's all seniority based bidding. Airlines are one of the
| few industries with a strong enough union you can sue your
| employer for a billion dollars and keep working.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Not my favorite scenario, an active captain having a $1B bone
| to pick with his boss.
| swarnie_ wrote:
| I recall a conservation with a pilot in a bar. He claimed they
| could pick their routes to an extent and had more flex the
| longer they had been there.
|
| He was particularly keen on the London - Australia double
| header, apparently he made bank on that route.
| jbgreer wrote:
| Even better when you consider that some pilots are not
| domiciled in their route's origin city and for some airlines
| get paid by blocks of time. I recall a friend talking about
| pilots that lived in lower-cost areas, commuted to LA for
| work, then flew SFO - LAX routes, and got paid for their time
| in-between flights in those cities. They made more money off
| the plane than on it.
| tutmeister wrote:
| My uncle flew A340-600s on that route for years and had a
| great time. Due to crew rest requirements and seniority, he
| only flew 2-3 times a month and had a house on both ends.
| Unfortunately, he also ended up with a family on both ends
| and that didn't end too well...
| dannykwells wrote:
| Real twist ending with this comment. Five stars would
| chortle at again.
| hpkuarg wrote:
| I've heard that monogamy is a big challenge for anyone who
| works in the butt-in-seats side of that industry.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| It's true as far I'm concerned, my ex works on that side
| spoonjim wrote:
| He's union, they can't do anything to him. However, given the
| recent cases of the murderous disgruntled pilots (Germanwings
| and Malaysia Airlines) I wonder if they'll be able to bench him
| with pay out of precaution. I know I sure wouldn't want to fly
| on his flight.
| jaywalk wrote:
| I worry more about your mental state than I do his, quite
| honestly. That's quite an insane leap you've taken.
| [deleted]
| travisjungroth wrote:
| If people who believed their app idea was stolen were
| murderous then Silicon Valley would look like Mad Max.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| "Just walk away"
| breakfastduck wrote:
| This comment makes you look considerably more mentally
| deranged than you think it does.
| spoonjim wrote:
| You get on your flight to Phoenix and the flight attendant
| says, "your pilot is Bob Smith, by the way funny fact, he
| is suing Delta for $1 billion! Pretzels will be coming
| shortly." That won't give you any pause?
| PeterisP wrote:
| No, why, does suing others and expecting a payday somehow
| imply that the plaintiff is likely to be suicidal?
|
| Or is the implication that the airline is likely to blow
| up their own airplane and kill hundreds of passengers
| just to swap one major lawsuit for hundreds of major
| lawsuits?
| atatatat wrote:
| Well, from the perspective of non-shattered people,
| wanting to go through the hell and horror that is our
| justice system could lead outsiders to believe shit's not
| going great for them to begin with.
| [deleted]
| djrogers wrote:
| No. "He just lost his $1B lawsuit against Delta" _might_
| , but this definitely wouldn't.
| mdellavo wrote:
| Doesn't really seem like much original work... a chat app
| tailored to a specific audience?
| nikanj wrote:
| Alas, Delta will simply stall the case until the pilot runs out
| of funds, or dies of old age
| sodafountan wrote:
| I'm assuming the pilot could convince the union to fund the
| litigation if Delta tries to drag their feet, that's kind of
| what unions are for.
| notjustanymike wrote:
| Delta did say the app didn't meet their needs.
|
| It's possible the codebase was a patchwork of Bootstrap, PHP,
| Wordpress, and jQuery UI plugins that could buckle under a
| production load. It could have been a good idea poorly executed;
| we just don't know right now.
| kayfox wrote:
| I am betting one of the needs was integration with their
| dispatch software.
| yardie wrote:
| > the codebase was a patchwork of Bootstrap, PHP, Wordpress,
| and jQuery UI plugins
|
| So like most enterprisey software. You'd be amazed how much
| enterprise software has a customer of 1 and any bugs the end
| users have a workaround simply because they are a captive
| audience that had this steaming pile foisted on them.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Even if it was a well built app, anyone that's built an app for
| an F500 company, knows the hoops you have to jump through for
| things like compliance.
|
| There's a good chance the app did what it was supposed to just
| fine, but Delta couldn't sign on because it didn't have
| Reporting Requirements, SOC2 Compliant or a litany of other
| things that an Enterprise would require to sign on.
| ksec wrote:
| They could still have paid him the $100K as part of the R&D
| of the App.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I'm willing to bet they did offer him some $$ for the App.
| He probably asked for $X. Delta countered with $Y.They
| couldn't come to an agreement so conversations ended and
| Delta built the same kind of app in-house. Then the guy
| sues them.
| noahmbarr wrote:
| I would bet you $100 Delta offered that and more.
| duxup wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| I work for a company that sells a SaaS product, it's not
| unlike many others, but we win sales based on how flexible /
| well we integrate with our customer's wonky systems.
|
| What our application does is roughly the same as anyone
| else's ... but for many customers ease of integration with
| their systems is the make or break point.
| wmeredith wrote:
| This is a good point. I am currently consulting for a F100
| healthcare company, and everything they do is driven by
| compliance. It's the first and last thing that gets talked
| about in almost every meeting.
| duxup wrote:
| >carbon copy, knock-off of the role-based text messaging
| component of [his] proprietary QrewLive communications platform
|
| Not to say it isn't a good idea but the limited description seems
| like an idea that I imagine more than one person could have come
| up with.
|
| That's not to justify the company's actions, but if that is the
| app I'm not sure how novel a thing we're talking about here and
| maybe the needs that weren't met were simply back-end tech based
| and not idea based...?
|
| How many 'roughly the same idea but X' start ups are out there?
| and it's not always the first that succeeds.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| It's not about whether more than one person could come up withe
| idea, it's that he pitched it to his own employer, met multiple
| times with execs to discuss acquisition, only for them to
| suddenly cut him off and directly copy what he proposed with no
| remuneration.
|
| That is _not_ the same as two disparate people who have never
| communicated coming up with the same idea for something.
| giobox wrote:
| No expert, and yes I agree it might be a sharp practice if
| they substantially lead him to believe they would deal with
| him, but is this not the purpose patents serve?
|
| The app as described in this article at least is incredibly
| generic - I'd imagine the Delta board members could
| independently arrive at the conclusion such software features
| would help and also determine that there may be other options
| to select that fit their operational requirements better.
| "Role based text messaging" sounds a lot like a workplace
| chat app...
| josefx wrote:
| Of course they could independently arrive at those ideas,
| they could independently try them out and see if they are
| worth it. But why invest what might end up a few hundred
| man hours in management meetings and trials when you can
| outsource it to some idiot who didn't even think about
| getting paid for the initial trial and error phase of the
| project.
|
| Don't talk to people unless you get paid for the time you
| invested, the guy behind AppGet had to learn that the hard
| way, as did hundreds of service companies that got used to
| outsource initial project planing without ever hearing back
| from their potential customers.
| giobox wrote:
| You can spin that both ways - a company Delta sized may
| want to partner with a company who have track record in
| providing support and services to a Delta sized firm, vs
| a pilot's side project... For Delta, long term support
| they can count on for years will surely matter.
|
| Especially for "role based chat", there are many mature
| enterprise offerings in that space already. It's arguably
| only pertinent to evaluate all options aside from the
| single one presented by an employee trying to sell a side
| project.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| The other big component of this that's missing to me is how
| much he was asking delta to buy it for. If he really invested
| 100k into it and was asking for some reasonable multiple for
| his code+idea then it's probably disingenuous of them to not
| just pay him for it (and maybe pay for him to help dev it).
|
| That said, maybe he asked for something absurd like a billion
| dollars for what was effectively "a good idea." Hard to know
| without that and the fact that the information isn't in here
| leads me to believe that the answer doesn't land in his favor.
| erhk wrote:
| If he spent 100k, what did he spend it on? I dont think he is
| the developer
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| That 100k number is probably some combination of his time,
| some investment into server/hosting resources and some
| money spent on a contractor for development. The 100k cost
| number seems entirely reasonable, I'm just worried we're
| missing a part of the story where he asked Delta to pay him
| X for it and perhaps X was an entirely unreasonable number.
| distribot wrote:
| 100k seems quite high for a specialized chat app.
| notyourwork wrote:
| It's hard to see anything beyond "he said, she said" from this
| article. No real substance to qualify the pilot's claim.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| That's what the courts are there to settle.
| notyourwork wrote:
| I agree, the pilot may have a valid claim but the article
| left me without anything beyond "I built this, they didn't
| pay me and built it."
| rexreed wrote:
| One would think that the $100k that was invested and the
| meetings with the Delta management would be documented
| somewhere
| vladmk wrote:
| Yeah I'm interested in what they knocked off vs what's
| unique.
|
| Verbal agreements are as good as the paper they're signed on
| though - Big Business 101
| hansvm wrote:
| > Verbal agreements are as good as the paper they're signed
| on though - Big Business 101
|
| Verbal agreements are legally binding in many
| jurisdictions, but they're hard to enforce for obvious
| reasons.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| It would not be hard to substantiate the existence of both
| apps, the pilot's expenditures, nor the fact of those meetings.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Going from the link to the outage in 2016 where " A widespread
| computer meltdown is at the heart of the problem" this smells
| of ransomware attack and the $100K "proprietary QrewLive
| communications platform" seems more like a multi-role backup
| and ERP solution than just a simple chat application that the
| article implies.
| neither_color wrote:
| It's also possible that they took his idea seriously but not him
| seriously. They might have thought "this guy's idea is good but
| he's a pilot hacking some sloppy code together in his spare time,
| we'll go with a 'REAL' software firm so our pilot can focus on
| piloting." It may just be a matter of an employee convincing his
| employer of the need for the app and then getting outbid by a
| smooth talking enterprise salesman.
| yoz-y wrote:
| Wouldn't happen in France where most contracts specify that
| anything you do, even tangentially related to your work, belongs
| to the company.
| pembrook wrote:
| If I had a nickel for every person who thinks they have an
| "original" app idea I'd be a millionaire. I'm skeptical there can
| be any novel tech in a chat tool someone spent $100k to build.
|
| But let's be generous here and assume his story is 100% true; his
| app was stolen and it is worth $1 billion dollars to the company.
|
| Why waste time in a stupid legal battle when you could be selling
| your app to one of the 5,000 other airlines on earth that likely
| have the same need? Delta has just proven how useful it is based
| on the fact that they built it themselves!
|
| I highly doubt Delta will be selling internal tech to
| competitors, so the market opportunity should still be there.
|
| If the founders' time is best spent in a lawsuit with a single
| potential customer instead of selling to other customers, I'd say
| that's a sign it was never a viable business to begin with.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > If I had a nickel for every person who thinks they have an
| "original" app idea I'd be a millionaire
|
| err, hate to burst your bubble, but I already had the idea for
| making a nickel a pop off of those people, and I'll fight you
| to the death over it.
| whoisjuan wrote:
| If Delta can produce any evidence that such app ideas were
| already discussed before he brought his own concept to management
| he is screwed.
|
| Honestly this isn't very novel idea. It's possible that many
| people came up with this very same idea before he did.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It's a fairly inflammatory headline and article, but it doesn't
| actually say very much.
|
| I suspect the story stretches out over a long time period, and
| has lots of variables.
|
| I can think of many ways that either side could be cast as
| villain or protagonist.
| joelcollinsdc wrote:
| Is there any IP created because you generated a particular
| program / interface? Perhaps not the code itself but the end
| product? In the early stages of my career we were advised to
| never test out a competitors product for fears that we would
| inadventently copy something of theirs that was protected, but at
| my current company we compare our product to our competitors
| regularly. No risk there?
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| My question is similar -- what ideas are there to patent in a
| communications app? Isn't it just user profiles and messages?
| anonu wrote:
| I caught a glimpse of the app when an air stewardess sat down
| next to me on a Delta flight. We had a nice conversation and then
| she looked me up by seat number and congratulated me on my Delta
| track record. I believe you could also save notes on each
| passenger.
|
| I thought that was both pretty cool and also interesting that
| they all had tons of data on any customer within a few clicks.
| mdellavo wrote:
| That does not seem like the app from the article
| iamacyborg wrote:
| So basically a CRM?
| yobbo wrote:
| Even if it's true, so what? Is it illegal in America to borrow
| ideas?
|
| It reads like selling the idea of an umbrella to a wet guy in the
| rain, and then suing him when later he refuses to pay.
| arghwhat wrote:
| > Even if it's true, so what? Is it illegal in America to
| borrow ideas?
|
| In some cases, yes.
|
| > It reads like selling the idea of an umbrella to a wet guy in
| the rain, and then suing him when later he refuses to pay.
|
| It's more like the wet guy listening to your pitch, playing
| with the product to see how it works and then declining as he
| goes to make an identical one to avoid paying you.
| vladmk wrote:
| It reads more like:
|
| You show someone that a telephone can save them time.
|
| They interview you about telephones.
|
| They then decide not to pay you about applying your telephone
| idea tot heir system and create their own.
|
| The value here is really in either a)the consulting or b)
| your telephone product being so great they can't copy it.
|
| His app idea if he spent 100k and only that nominal amount
| likely wasn't that unique or special
| pessimizer wrote:
| > a)the consulting
|
| Then pay him. If they had no one bright enough to come up
| with it themselves, they received something of value.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| I wonder what the pilots contract said.
|
| If he was a software engineer, his contract would state that it
| belonged to his employer.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Depends on the contract, many places I've worked if it's
| outside of company time and on your own hardware you own it
| smoldesu wrote:
| > He told the CEO that he had a solution for issues like that,
| which resulted in several meetings with executives who gave him
| verbal assurances that they were going to acquire his app.
|
| Another great example of the lawyer's mantra: get it in
| handwriting!
| alberth wrote:
| And in the tech world, this would be the property of the
| employer.
|
| News at 11.
| overscore wrote:
| In some jurisdictions. Certainly not all.
| WalterBright wrote:
| This is why design patents exist. If you think your design is
| special, get a design patent for it.
|
| Boeing paid a lot of money over the years to use the design
| patent of engines in the back used on 727s. Personally, I thought
| the patent was ridiculous, but that's how the patent system
| works.
| daenz wrote:
| Sounds like he got "brain raped" (term from Silicon Valley show),
| where they get you into a meeting and coax you to explain all of
| your secret sauce and then build a parallel product.
|
| It is clearly morally wrong, but is it illegal? Does someone here
| have a legal sense of this?
| mdellavo wrote:
| is there any secret sauce?
| daenz wrote:
| Probably not, but does that have an impact on the legality if
| you explain it willingly without an NDA?
| lostcolony wrote:
| Especially while you're an employee of the company you're
| pitching to.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Trade secrets are that, but if you willingly disclose, that's
| on you.
|
| I recall as story about a manufacturer, building a new plant.
| He took "reasonable security precautions" to protect its
| design, fences, guards while being built. A competitor hired
| a plane, flew over, took detailed photos. It was later ruled
| that the trade secrets were intact, thus could not be used.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| I think people are generally way to over paranoid about this.
| In my field of quant finance this is particularly acute. People
| refuse to talk about even what markets they're trading for fear
| that their competitors will steal their edge.
|
| I've seen enough to know, that your secret sauce probably isn't
| as secret as you think. Even in the ridiculously tight-lipped
| world of quant trading, it turns out that everyone's mostly
| doing the same few basic ideas with not much more to
| distinguish than a few peripheral variations here and there.
|
| In general execution ability, not having the best idea, tends
| to be the main driver of which teams win. If a third party does
| think your idea is brilliant, then stealing it from you is a
| pretty moronic way to capitalize on it. You're creating a
| motivated competitor from day one who by definition has a lot
| more domain expertise.
|
| It's much simpler to just cut the guy a check for equity in the
| company.
| Andy_G11 wrote:
| Might be different for different fields: if a firm with
| initially lower domain expertise but greater development &
| implementation resources can get sufficient understanding of
| a good idea to generate a practical solution themselves, they
| might gamble that by the time the originator of the idea gets
| the funding and resources to be of any significance in the
| market, they will have achieved a runaway lead with their
| mimicked version.
| jollybean wrote:
| I'm not sure anything is 'clear' in the situation.
|
| He could have had some implementation of some kind of basic
| messaging functionality, which for any number of reasons they
| may have decided to implement themselves, which is pretty
| rational for a whole host of reasons.
|
| If an employee is trying to sell a 'side project' to a Corp.
| they are acting effectively as a 3rd party and should expect to
| be treated as such.
|
| If there was some material, core IP that was infringed upon,
| maybe there's an issue, but otherwise some kind of independent
| implementation is probably within bounds.
|
| I can't speak to what extent there was 'carbon copy' of
| features, or even if that is lawful or what not.
|
| Think of it like this: company ABC pitches their app to
| Airline. Airline decides to roll their own, and the feature
| base seems quite similar. That's pretty normal.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| Reminds me of the classic HN post "Google tried to patent my
| work after a job interview" and the included top level comment
| by the developer of SpeakerBox explaining how they got the same
| treatment.[0] Google invited them for a meeting about
| integrating the tech to the Moto X, then after a technical
| explanation showed them out with a smarmy challenge that the
| 'race is on' and subsequently filed patents on similar
| technology.
|
| [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| I once was going to work for a friend's startup but we didn't
| see eye to eye on everything and decided to not work together.
| As a joke I said I would go work for the competition which
| ended with a 2 hour interview in a town an hour away with the
| competition. They offered me a job doing backend work however I
| wanted to develop frontend so I didn't take that job either.
| What interested me is that in a 2 hour interview I learned
| everything about my friend's competition's business model and
| future plans. I've never done it since but if someone wanted to
| know what another company is doing apply and ask a bunch of
| questions during the interview. Asking too many question during
| an interview isn't a thing.
| c618b9b695c4 wrote:
| >Asking too many question during an interview isn't a thing.
|
| Not so sure about that. I recently interviewed where I asked
| something along the lines of, "So what would my daily
| responsibilities look like?" They refused to tell me what I
| would be doing day-to-day. No specifics on technologies,
| platforms, would I be helping internal/external groups, etc.
| Could not even get them to elaborate on specifics in the job
| posting itself.
| 1024core wrote:
| I have a buddy who interviewed at a company in the Valley
| back in around 1998. They also refused to tell him what his
| daily responsibilities would be like. He said to himself,
| "I'm not going to waste my time parsing f'in Apache log
| files!", and turned them down.
|
| That company? Google. He would've been employee # < 100,
| and comfortably retired in 10 years.
| lioeters wrote:
| Hmm, an intriguing business idea: "undercover interview at
| your competition" as a service.
| SirSourdough wrote:
| Now we're coming full-circle back to the start-up posted on
| HN the other day that was going to send "expert" applicants
| in to evangelize specific products and technologies in
| interviews.
| defaultname wrote:
| Alternately he had an idea simultaneously with others having
| the same idea [1]. An obvious idea. It's entirely possible that
| his pitch and purported meetings had nothing to do with the
| eventual app. It's why many firms and creative groups have a
| strict "don't tell us your `ideas'" policy.
|
| In this case his idea was "role-based" communication. He came
| up with this (2016) as Slack and other role-based solutions
| were storming across the market.
|
| [1] - a common problem coupled with advancements in the
| field/technology often yield many people "inventing" the same
| thing simultaneously, because it's an obvious next step. It's
| why we're so negative of the countless useless "on a computer"
| patents, "on a network", etc.
| fouric wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27845534 responds to
| this quite eloquently:
|
| > It's not about whether more than one person could come up
| withe idea, it's that he pitched it to his own employer, met
| multiple times with execs to discuss acquisition, only for
| them to suddenly cut him off and directly copy what he
| proposed with no remuneration.
|
| > That is not the same as two disparate people who have never
| communicated coming up with the same idea for something.
| kayfox wrote:
| Its also possible that after pitching it to them, Delta
| explored the competitive solutions for the same issue and
| bid it out to some other vendor, perhaps their dispatch
| software vendor or one who could integrate with that
| software.
| defaultname wrote:
| That doesn't disprove that "two disparate people who have
| never communicated coming up with the same idea for
| something".
|
| It's entirely possible, if not _probable_ , that there was
| independent efforts to build out "role-based"
| communications. Some employee comes along and says "Look,
| I've already developed an app do you want to buy it?". They
| talk with him and decide that what he has built isn't
| worthwhile and move on. Suddenly he thinks he has
| intellectual ownership over the entire premise (hence the
| hilarious $1B claim).
|
| It doesn't work like that. Indeed, stories like this are
| why many firms simply don't want to listen to any pitches,
| because people often have a pretty outsized notion about
| their "inventions".
|
| Again, maybe they really did rip off his idea. Maybe in
| 2016 they really had no idea of broadening their
| communications approaches (or I guess narrowing in this
| case). His lawyers can demand the pertinent records and
| that's what a court case is for. But just seeing this
| reminds me why I'm very clear in a lot of situations that I
| don't want people's ideas/inventions, because in almost
| every case they've been considered but now the person
| thinks they invented it and have ownership over it.
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