Case Scenario

"Luke Vandenberg always wanted to be an interactive web designer since he was about halfway his High School years. He started working as an intern for a design studio while he was in his final year and got a lot of good experience from this. After he finished High School, Luke enrolled in a multimedia degree at Altiora University. The degree required him to do a year work experience after completing the second year. After this year, he would return to full time study and complete the final year. This extended a three year degree to four years, but Luke was OK about this because he was able to land an intern job with a leading interactive design studio (TT INTERACTIVE) that worked closely with advertising agencies to develop the web component of major ad campaigns. During his time at TT INTERACTIVE, Luke worked on a big project that involved the design and implementation of a web portal for Altiora University who wanted to re-badge their image, and market itself more effectively while improving the scope and functionality of their existing web portal. It was a big job for a high profile client and TT INTERACTIVE wanted someone who not only had the design skills but also had some familiarity with the culture at Altiora, so Luke got the job. Luke was part of a three person project team. It was a demanding but highly satisfying project that was almost finished by the time he finished his intern year, and was due to return to university for the final year. TT were a hard task- master. Though he was being paid the bare minimum, he was expected to work long hours. He was told the experience he was getting was worth a lot. Nonetheless, he had mixed feelings; on the one hand he was indeed getting some great experience, but he could not help feeling somewhat exploited by TT management who seemed to care more about project outcomes than the people making the project happen. Luke was a careful person by nature, and routinely made backups of the project files that he stored off-site for safe- keeping. He had lost hours of work before and was in the habit of making off-site backups. He did not think or realize that this constituted a breach of the agreement he had signed with TT to not remove any intellectual copy off-site without the permission of a TT Director. And so it was that when he left TT INTERACTIVE he happened to have a more-or-less complete set of project files for the new Altiora University web portal. He did not at this stage intend to do anything with this material. During his final year at Altiora, Luke was gratified, in fact delighted to see the new web portal come on-line. He felt like he was making a difference in the world. Despite some teething problems, and some disparaging comments from his fellow students, the new portal was a success. He felt justifiably proud of himself. When he finished his degree he had been told there would probably be a job for him at TT but they were by this time fully staffed. Luke was a free agent in the world, looking for a way to apply his talents. With the experience he now had as a co-developer of a major new portal he was able to secure a similar position at a rival studio, Tangential. A year goes by, and Luke has settled in to his new job at Tangential. He becomes a team leader in due course. One day his boss calls him in for a conversation. How would Luke like to take the lead on a project to develop a web portal for Charleston Technical University? Tangential have successfully tendered for the project. This is important. Tangential management is quite excited about it. The boss hints that anything Luke might have “learned” while at TT INTERACTIVE would be helpful. Something in the Boss’s manner strikes Luke as a bit odd. Then he remembers having mentioned in passing over drinks some months earlier that he still had the backup project files from his earlier job working on the Altiora portal for TT. Luke feels a little uneasy at what his boss seems to be suggesting, but is nonetheless excited by the project, and is keen to do a good job and perhaps get ahead in the industry, maybe one day open his own studio. Why not? Luke has recently married, and his wife and he had been discussing only the other day how good it would be to find a bigger place to live, maybe even start a family. The upshot of the meeting is that Luke enthusiastically accepts the challenging new team lead role on the Charleston Technical University web portal project. Without any discussion with anyone, he digs out his old backups of the Altiora project (done while at TT) and dusts them off. Yes, he decides, this could be useful; this could be the framework that will save a lot of time and effort. He wonders briefly whether he is doing the right thing, but finishes by telling himself that “This is my own work. Don’t I have a right to use it? Why reinvent the wheel?” So Luke takes his earlier work (and that of his fellow developers at TT who worked on the Altiora project) and modifies it so that it is superficially different from the original (a user would not notice much similarity), but under the skin, at a programming level, it was largely based on his earlier work. The Charleston Technical University web portal is ultimately delivered. The client is happy, Tangential is happy, and Altiora and TT INTERACTIVE do not allege the theft of their intellectual property. Years pass. Luke becomes a senior project manager and continues to build a successful career, culminating in the opening of his own studio. One day, as Director of his own studio, he receives a phone call from Altiora University. They flatter him as a successful alumnus, and ask if he would consider taking on an intern or two for the following year. He thinks for a moment, and somewhere in the back of his mind, a troubling thought takes shape … End of Case Study."