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Comment by spoiledtechie | Hacker News Reader

I am convinced that we actually had the idea first and built the first prototype for this. Sadly, my companies bureaucracy held up the release of the application. I even wrote a blog post about it a while back...

http://spoiledtechie.com/post/2011/09/12/Fucking-Big-Company...

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Yeah, that is one of the problems of working for a large company. If its any consolation one of the reasons that pushed me into leaving Google was they had this horrendous "we own any App you write for a phone" clause in their employment agreement.

It would be interesting to know how your company would react if you quit and decided to market this product.

"we own any App you write for a phone"

Does this refer to apps written on company time or using company resources? Or any application written for a phone from anywhere at any time?

Their interpretation (and I got this directly from HR/Legal) was that any app, for any kind of 'smartphone', even if it was on your own time on all your own gear. They claimed that Google was in the business of 'smartphone applications' and so anything you wrote belonged to them. Even in California. I asked them if I wrote a kitchen timer application for the iPhone would they claim ownership, they answered in the affirmative.

And I did consult an attorney on that and his comments were that you could probably litigate it and win, although you would wouldn't be working there any more. So if you really wanted to write an app, just quit and write it, so much simpler legally, and you could keep all the profits rather than run the risk of losing all the profit and ownership to Google.

> This product is soo revolutionary, it has the ability to put an entire product out of business

Is it accurate enough and sensitive enough to really replace geiger counters (assuming that's what you are talking about)?

It is actually.

The algorithm is soo brain dead simple too.

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