Last update: 1997-08-07 by dennette@wiz-worx.com
<Who is this "Dennette" person?>
Dennette Arthur Harrod, Jr, <dennette@wiz-worx.com>, hereafter referred to as the plaintiff, deposes and says;
The plaintiff has been involved with the Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (IGES) since it's first release in 1980 during his employment at Xerox as a CAD/CAM data exchange programmer.
The plaintiff created a shareware software programming business in 1983 and began doing business under the name of WiZ WORX, and when he subsequently became an employee of Applicon, with responsibility for creating IGES translators for them, he amended his employment agreement to recognize his ownership of computer software developed with his own resources on his own time.
Applicon supported the plaintiff's participation in IGES activities for the IGES/PDES Organization (IPO) as attested to by his name and theirs appearing in IGES Version 3.0 (1986). Between 1984 and 1988, Applicon allocated 52 man-weeks (at $800 per week) of the plaintiff's time to work on IGES activities for the IPO, and reimbursed the plaintiff over $15,000 in travel expenses.
When Applicon refused to continue said sponsorship, the plaintiff sought employment elsewhere in order to continue his participation in the IPO activities.
In 1988, Computervision hired and relocated the plaintiff, with the same conditions that his WiZ WORX business and products were his own, and committed fifty percent of his time to support IGES related activities for the IPO, which at the time was managed by the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The plaintiff is personally acknowledged in IGES 4.0 (1988), along with his sponsoring employer, "for his help with the many changes to the illustrations made during the edit review process and for the final plotting of each", which added greatly to both his personal reputation and that of his employer.
In 1988, the plaintiff wrote a software program called IGESPEEK™, which was the world's first interactive browser for IGES files, and began selling IGES utilities to an international market of IGES users.
The plaintiff served for several years as the IGES Project Manager for the IPO, and was responsible for IGES Version 5.0 (1990) as the first American National Standard to be documented and published electronically using itself, i.e., all of the technical illustrations in the printed document which demonstrate examples of the IGES entities were generated from IGES formatted files
IGESDRAW™, the software used to generate these illustrations from the IGES formatted files, was created by the plaintiff d.b.a. WiZ WORX and donated to the IPO so that future versions might be published electronically
In 1990, the plaintiff began selling WISL™, a source code library of routines to read and write IGES files; it is used to create IGESPEEK™, IGESDRAW™, and the other WiZ WORX IGES utilities, and saves IGES translator implementers six to eight man-weeks of development time, which further enhanced his international reputation.
NIST transferred responsibility for managing the IPO, obtaining ANSI approval for the IGES specification, publishing the printed document, and copyright ownership of same, to the U.S. Product Data Association (USPro), hereafter referred to as the defendant, upon their incorporation in 1991.
WiZ WORX was the Founding Member of USPro, being the first company to pay for membership, and the plaintiff served on the IPO Steering Committee for a number of years, not as a representative of Computervision, but on his own behalf.
In 1991, the bulk of the plaintiff's IPO related activities involved assisting the IGES Editor (a NIST employee) in preparing IGES 5.1 (1991) for publication, and most of those paid and unpaid hours were spent at home using desktop publishing software and electronic communications with NIST, for which the plaintiff was identified as the "IGES Project Manager (previous)" on the title page, with Computervision as his sponsor.
Between 1988 and 1992, Computervision allocated 130 man-weeks (at $1,000 per week) of the plaintiff's time to work on IGES activities for the IPO, and reimbursed the plaintiff over $75,000 in travel expenses.
In addition to this, the plaintiff performed over 40 man-weeks of effort on his own personal computer to help prepare IGES 5.2 for publication, and contributed the work in the name of his WiZ WORX business.
When the plaintiff was discharged from Computervision in 1992, the WiZ WORX IGES Utilities, WISL™ source code library, and IGES related consulting became the plaintiff's principal sources of income, said business being conducted primarily on the Internet through the WiZ WORX World Wide Web site, where customers may download evaluation copies of the plaintiff's software.
With the publication of IGES 5.2 (1993), the plaintiff's name appeared with WiZ WORX as his sponsor, but he was not mentioned as one of the "Associated Staff" along with the other members of the IPO who had spent weeks in hotel room laboriously reviewing drafts of the 600 page document, comparing each page against penciled corrections made to previous drafts.
In spite of this insult, the plaintiff has proudly pointed to the use of his IGESDRAW™ program to help create the electronically printed IGES specification when negotiating the sale of WISL™ to potential customers.
The plaintiff continued his contributions to the IPO by modifying some of the IGES files for the figures so as to actually use the entities being demonstrated rather than just two-dimensional representations of them, and made them available to IGES users world-wide on the Internet. Most of the figures that have been changed or added since IGES 5.2 were created using WiZ WORX resources, approximately 20 man-weeks of unpaid effort, and about $5,000 in travel expenses.
As IGES Figure Editor for the IPO, the plaintiff created many new figures and modified many previously existing ones during the production of IGES 5.2, but he was not identified as such by the defendant, which viewed the plaintiff viewed as a personal and professional insult that was to be remedied with publication of the next version.
IGES Version 5.3 (1996) was published by the defendant with the plaintiff and his company identified on the title page as the "IGES Figure Editor", but some of the figure illustrations are distorted or of such low quality as to be useless as examples.
It was obvious to the plaintiff when he saw the printed version of IGES 5.3 that IGESDRAW™ had not been used correctly and that no one had consulted him to correct the problems.
The plaintiff has had to disavow his participation in the publication of IGES 5.3 because he did not have an opportunity to review the camera-ready copy before it was sent to the printer.
The plaintiff is no longer able to use the current version of IGES, an internationally recognized standard to which he has devoted several years of his life and to which he owes his professional livelihood, as a proud example of his products.
The plaintiff feels that his international reputation has been tarnished by the poor quality of the illustrations associated with his alleged responsibility as "IGES Figure Editor" for IGES 5.3.
By their own admission, the defendant lacks the resources, expertise, or even the original electronic documents to be able to reproduce IGES 5.3, even though the plaintiff provided the defendant with a full set of same on a CD-ROM when asked in the spring of 1996.
The defendant is unable to recreate any previous version of IGES, although the plaintiff has archive copies of every version since IGES 5.0.
The defendant has asked the for plaintiff's help in correcting the badly reproduced IGES 5.3 figures by providing camera ready copy of same, but has rejected an offer from the plaintiff to acknowledge their mistake on their World Wide Web HomePage and point to corrected versions of the figures (many of which contain color, which cannot be discerned in the printed version) on the plaintiff's Web site, because the plaintiff is not a member of USPro.
The plaintiff's desire in this matter is to ensure that future versions of IGES reflect the highest standards of leading edge product definition data interoperability in its own production, and the plaintiff feels that this can only be accomplished if he is given the responsibility, since the defendant's lack of responsibility has been demonstrated by the deterioration of the document in their hands.
The plaintiff does not feel that he should have to pay one thousand dollars each year to the defendant simply to be acknowledged for his thirteen years of on-going commitment to a largely volunteer standards activity (the IGES Project), an activity which the defendant was created specifically to administer, and whose sole product (the 600 page printed IGES document), once freely available from NIST, now costs over three hundred dollars per copy.
The defendant has compounded their mistakes by creating a CD-ROM version of IGES 5.3 which is of even poorer quality, and less useful, than the printed version; instead of using the original electronic version of the document (which they would not understand how to use even if it were in their possession), they paid to have the printed pages electronically scanned, and the low-resolution raster images on the CD-ROM are even more useless that those in the printed version.
The defendant also paid much more for this "service" than the plaintiff would have charged in a proposal which he submitted to the defendant on numerous occasions following the publication of IGES 5.1 in 1990.
The plaintiff submits that based on his experience in preparing previous versions of IGES for ANSI approval and publication, including his participation in ASME Y14.26M, the organization which sponsored ANSI approval of IGES before USPro was created to serve that specific function for the IPO and the IGES Project, he and his company are the most qualified resources in the world for publishing the next and subsequent versions of IGES, in both printed and CD-ROM formats.
Defendant must correct the images and reprint IGES 5.3 at a higher level of quality, and pay damages for the harm caused to the international reputation of himself and his company from being identified as "IGES Figure Editor" on the title page.
By way of damages plaintiff will accept a lifetime membership in USPro for his company, full control over the publication of all future versions of IGES, in printed or CD-ROM format, and that he be compensated at fair market value for such work, with all copyrights and revenues from the sale thereof to belong to the defendant.
Signed, DAHarrod
(Sunday, 1997-07-27)
Last update: 1997-08-07 by dennette@wiz-worx.com
<Who is this "Dennette"
person?>