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Sunday, June 25, 2006
2 firms fight over software
By Karlon N. Rama
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
In what may be the first suit of its kind in Cebu City, a software company has asked the court to stop a rival firm from further making and selling a computer program, saying they own the source codes that the program was built on.
In a 12-page suit filed last June 2, Primary Software Development Corp. asked the Regional Trial Court (RTC) to issue a seizure and impounding order against Citron Business Solutions Inc., also based in Cebu City.
Primary Software is also seeking P1 million in damages.
Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 12 Judge Ramon Daomilas Jr. has given Citron until July 4, 2006 to show cause why their marketing operations should not be stopped.
The court has issued a 72-hour temporary restraining order against Citron and, in a hearing last Friday, was asked to extend the order until the injunction could be resolved.
“A resolution on the extension should be out by now,” said Mark Opada, the lawyer who prepared the suit that also impleaded Citron employees Arnold Nodado Estores, Edmund Pama and May Geraldez.
Strings of codes
In the suit, Primary accused Citron of making a business software that they have marketed under the name Ideasoft and that, upon Primary’s verification, is essentially a “modified and defaced” version of their own business program.
“Unmistakable strings of original codes from Primary Software were present. Undeniably, original Primary software codes were used by Ideasoft to create another version of it but with a different name,” the suit read.
The codes, Primary Software believes, was brought to Citron by one of the impleaded Citron employees—Estores, Pama and Geraldez—all of whom, the complaint said, were formerly with Primary Software.
The court, under Republic Act (RA) 8293), or the Intellectual Property Rights Law, has the power to seize items to “prevent the entry into the channels of commerce” goods involved in infringement of copyrights actions.
History
The law also authorizes the court to order the impounding “of any article which may serve as evidence in court proceedings” whenever infringement actions are filed.
Based on the suit, Estores worked with Primary, owned by Michael Jurado, from 1995, when it was still known as the Primary Software Reengineering, up to November 2005.
As part of his employment, he received free training in the use of the Borland Delphi, a programming tool, and MS Windows in 1996 from Jurado, who learned it by studying abroad.
With the training, Estores became the programming head. He also became the systems administrator whose functions included “custody and security of code access and backup.”
“The function of code access is extremely confidential as having access to the codes could mean potential tempering of the program itself. Such code access was entrusted to Estores alone and no other,” the suit read.
Great terms
Estores, according to the suit, was compensated handsomely—an executive insurance coverage of P1 million, free housing, a company car with gasoline, 100 percent tuition subsidy for all his children, easy cash advances, incentive bonuses and quarterly profit sharing.
But Estores resigned from the company in December 2005, a few months after the other impleaded employees also left.
The reason cited was a job offer in Canada.
The resignation was granted and, according to Primary, they even bought him is airline tickets.
However, in the third week of the same month, word that Estores was in Cebu and was “offering his software services to the public” surfaced. Within weeks, Primary’s own clients confirmed the information.
New firm
“Contrary to what Estores told (Primary), it was found out that defendant had not traveled to Canada but had joined a consulting group, Citron Business Solution Inc.,” the suit read.
The transfer took effect two days after Estores’ resignation from Primary.
The new company was allegedly composed of former employees of a former client, as well as Estores and the other defendants.
The alleged copyright infringement was uncovered when one of Primary’s programmers, Chris Jurado, was hired by client Elizabeth Gan-Go to assist in a data repair of one of her server computers.
Jurado noticed a program icon that was similar to the one they used on their program “Prime Software” but was used to execute another program, “Ideasoft,” written by Estores and marketed by Citron.
Familiar
He said he immediately suspected that somebody was tampering with their program so he explored the file’s subdirectors.
“To his surprise, Prime Software files were present within Ideasoft’s subdirectories and (after) clicking on ideasoft.exe, a defaced and modified Prime Software program went running,” the suit read.
According to the complaint, Primary said the Ideasoft program could only have been built over existing Prime Software source codes because it is “practically impossible for any programmer to development from scratch all these solutions offered by Citron through Ideasoft in a matter of two months.”
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (June 25, 2006 issue)
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