[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu>]

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Yes. The lawyer was walking on air when he got back to the office to tell
about it.

If I may digress into a personal story, somewhat pre-Unix. (I was nine
years old.)  I remember my father showing exactly the same excitement when
he returned from testifying as an expert witness for the plaintiff in a
near-electrocution case that left the victim paralyzed. A visitor touring a
substation had pointed to something to ask what it was, and got hit with a
33,000-volt arc. The defense lawyer tried to discredit the expert, a
professor who formerly had been an electrical engineer for a utility
company.

Lawyer: Have you ever designed a 33,000-volt indoor substation?
Prof: I have.
Lawyer, changing tactics after an unexpected answer: Do you recognize this
book?
Prof: I do.
Some discussion describing the book, an  inventory of utility facilities,
for the benefit of the jury.
Lawyer, with a hint of triumph: The inventory shows that your former
employer has no such substation.
Prof: Yes, after a few years we decided it was too dangerous and
decommissioned it.
...
Lawyer, showing a photo of the busbar that arced: Wouldn't someone have to
stretch unusually high to get near to it?
Prof: No. That picture was taken exactly [some measurement like 2'3"] from
the floor.
Lawyer: Do you mean to tell me you know where the picture was taken from,
without having been present when it was taken?
Prof, pointing to a blown-up engineering drawing on the courtroom wall:
This horizontal pipe is seen end-on in the photo. It  is dimensioned as
being 2'3" from the floor.

The plaintiff won.

Doug

On Mon, Mar 18, 2024 at 8:28 AM Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 5:24 PM Douglas McIlroy
> <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> >
> > > There was lawyerly concern about the code being stolen.
> >
> > Not always misplaced. There was a guy in Boston who sold Unix look-alike
> programs. A quick look at the binary revealed perfect correlation with our
> C source. Coincidentally, DEC had hired this person as a consultant in
> connection with cross-licensing negotiations with AT&T. Socializing at the
> end of a day's negotiations,  our lawyer somehow managed to turn the
> conversation to software piracy. He discussed  a case he was working on,
> and happened to have some documents about it in his briefcase. He pulled
> out a page disassembled binary and a page of source code and showed them to
> the consultant.
> >
> > After a little study, the consultant confidently opined that the binary
> was obviously compiled from that source. "Would it surprise you," the
> lawyer asked, "if I told you that this is yours and that is ours?" The
> consultant did not attend the following day's meeting.
>
> Fantastic story, and talk about a true "Perry Mason" moment for the
> lawyer. I'm sure it was also fertile material for stories at cocktail
> parties for the rest of his days.
>
>         - Dan C.
>

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