Who owns your knowledge

Who owns your knowledge?

Ken is a process engineer for Stardust Chemical Corp., and he has signed a secrecy agreement with the firm that prohibits his divulging information that the company considers proprietary.

Stardust has developed an adaptation of a standard piece of equipment that makes it highly efficient for cooling a viscous plastics slurry. (Stardust decides not to patent the idea but to keep it as a trade secret.)

Eventually, Ken leaves Stardust and goes to work for a candy-processing company that is not in any way in competition. He soon realises that a modification similar to Stardust's trade secret could be applied to a different machine used for cooling fudge and, at once, has the change made.

Has Ken acted unethically?


In my point of view, I would rather say that if Ken had a company and noticed that one of his
employees applied his company's super ideas to another competing or not competing company,
he will definitely not accept it. To consider this case in an ethical aspect, Ken is gaining
credentials at the expense of another's performance and that is unethical and any infringement
of copyright is punishable by law.

In another point of view, if Ken was the developer of that adaptation of a standard piece of equipment for Stardust, his case would be brought to a grey area where there is room for argument. Some could simply say that he has invented this development technique and he's got the right for his invention to use it anywhere if he is not under the restriction of a company; others may say that the conscience of a mature person will preclude him from sharing a secret idea that has been already implemented for developing the company and moving towards success regardless of whether he has invented this idea or not; the development was initially implemented in this company and a secrecy agreement was signed by all the employees including Ken, so he has accepted to transfer his credentials of this development to the company.

From a general point of view, Ken has moved to a new company and his loyality should be for the new company. He left Stardust legally, so there is no argument about his right to share an efficient development strategy for the sake of improving the new company's situation.