Scenario 1: Courts and ADR
Ben Watson, a project manager at Jabil Circuits in St. Petersburg, Florida, feels that he was terminated wrongfully and that his rights were violated upon his termination. Notably, Watson was terminated by Jabil for violating the firm's employee's provisions since he sent emails containing sexual jokes to his friends and played computer games and slot machines using the company's internet. According to Jabil's employee book provisions, the firm's property, including the internet and email, are to be used for business purpose only, and all employee-activity is subject to monitoring. Moreover, the company policy prohibited all forms of sexual harassment and indicated that any violation of the policies would result in termination.
Jabil was right to create and implement its company policies. Because, in Stengart v. Loving Care Agency , the court allows firms to adopt lawful policies to protect their assets, productivity, and reputation and ensure their legitimate corporate policies complied with (Mohammad et al., 2019). Moreover, the court ruling in Stengart v. Loving Care Agency allowed companies to discipline employees, including terminating them, for violating their policies.
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Markedly, Watson's actions are similar to those of Holmes in Holmes v. Petrovich Development Company, LLC (Mohammad et al., 2019) . Watson used the firm's email to send sexual jokes to friends knowing that such type of communications violated the company's policy that prohibited sexual harassment of any kind. Moreover, Watson sent sexual emails, knowing that he could be discovered. He was aware that he was not entitled to privacy since the firm informed its employees that all their activities were subject to monitoring. Therefore, Watson's communication was not for Evid. Code §952 purposes (Mohammad et al., 2019). Notably, the code allows one to expect their communications to third parties to be confidential and privileged.
Moreover, Considering the court ruling in Stengart v. Loving Care Agency, Watson was not subject to the protection of The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA), which prohibits any remote correspondence's interference (Fine,1987) (Mohammad et al., 2019). As such, Watson was neither wrongfully terminated nor were his rights violated because he did not expect to have a right to privacy when he used office email to send sexual jokes to his friends (Mohammad et al., 2019). Furthermore, the ruling in Stengart v. Loving Care Agency provides Jabil with the right to terminate Watson’s employment as he had violated the company policy that prohibited sexual harassment and the misuse of company property.
Scenario 3: Torts
Fitch, Jabil's human resource manager, committed a tort because he engaged in an action that harmed Watson's reputation. Notably, upon receiving a call from Tech Data Company that sought to obtain a reference for Watson, Fitch knowingly lied about Watson's character by claiming that Watson was a lazy person who was often involved with drugs. An examination of the tortfeasor's mind (Fitch) reveals that he committed an intentional tort because he had a grudge against Watson (Hershovitz, 2018). Therefore, he strived to teach him a lesson by lying about his character to the company that wanted to hire him. Though it is usually challenging to prove intent, Fitch's intent can easily be proved as it was straightforward since he knowingly caused harm to Watson by deliberately providing false evidence about Watson's character and the reason for his termination to his potential employers (Hershovitz, 2018). Moreover, Fitch provided false information about Watson while being aware of the harm he was causing.
Markedly, since Fitch provided false information about Watson to Tech Data Company verbally, his intentional tort is described as slander. Moreover, Fitch's intentional tort qualifies as defamation as he succeeded in lowering Watson's character since, in the end, Watson was not hired by Tech Data Company (Hershovitz, 2018). Additionally, Fitch's actions can be described as malice because Fitch had actual knowledge that the statement he was giving about Watson was false. Thus, his actions show that he recklessly disregarded the truth (Hershovitz, 2018). In a court of law, Fitch will not s be able to avoid liability in an intentional tort case because he cannot prove that he did not intend to damage Watson's reputation as the information he provided to the Tech Data Company was outright false.
Scenario 4: Intellectual Property
Vicki Talley's assertion that "everything on the internet is free for people to use" is not correct because even though most images on the internet lack copyright notices and are not watermarked, they are not free to use. This is because; copyright protection arises immediately a creator creates original work (Bently et al., 2018). As such, all authorship's original works, such as photos, software, and songs, are under copyright protection, which means they are protected from the "right to copy" (Bently et al., 2018). The copyright law, which is under the intellectual property rights, protects creators' creative works and provides them with the exclusive right to sell, produce, perform, or publish an original work unless a creator formally signs away their copyright. As such, without express permission from a creator to use a photo, the creator remains the only one with the permission to use the photo in whichever manner (Bently et al., 2018). Notably, the copyright protection availed to all digital content is similar to that offered for non-digital content in as much as most web content is often perceived as "disposable." Thus, copying original pieces of work from one website and pasting them on another violates the website's developer's copyright protection.
Therefore, Delores Banks was right when she warned Talley that copying texts and images from other websites and posting them on Jabil's website was an act that violated the original website's intellectual property rights. Notably, despite Banks' warning, Talley feels that the "fair use" doctrine protects her actions (Bently et al., 2018). However, Talley is wrong for believing that the "fair use" doctrine protects her actions. This is because the "fair use" doctrine only protects the copying of original content only when it is done for comment, teaching, criticism, research, news reporting, and scholarship (Bently et al., 2018). The doctrine does not protect Talley since she copied the texts and images to revitalize and advertise her firm's website.
Scenario 6: Intellectual Property
Several factors, such as the presence of express or implied agreement on assigned ownership, the employee's use of the employer's resources, and the invention being made within the employment scope, help determine the ownership of an employee's invention (Gotler, 2016). The United States law guarantees employees the ownership of their inventions except when they engage in an express or an implied agreement to assign the ownership of their invention to their employer or when they were specifically hired to invent a solution to a particular problem, respectively (Gotler, 2016). Therefore, employers need to require their employees to sign express invention assignment agreements (IAAs) if they hope to take ownership of their employees' inventions.
In the case of the ownership of Felicia's computer program, while working for Jabil Company, Felicia wins the ownership for her invention and not Jabil, her employer. This is because, first, even though Felicia invented the program while working for Jabil, her invention was part of her final project’s requirements while undertaking a degree in information technology at Hillsborough College (Gotler, 2016). Secondly, Felicia owns her invention rights because Jabil did not make her sign an express IAA. Thirdly, Felicia did not engage in any implied agreement where she signed off the ownership of her invention to Jabil. Lastly, Jabil did not employ Felicia precisely to invent the computer program, and in as much as she invented the program while working part-time for the company, she did not use the company's resources as the program was part of her school project (Gotler, 2016). Therefore, the resources she used belonged to Hillsborough College. Hence, the rightful owner of the computer program invention is Felicia and not Jabil.
References
Bently, L., Sherman, B., Gangjee, D., & Johnson, P. (2018). 13. Rights associated with copyright. Intellectual Property Law . https://doi.org/10.1093/he/9780198769958.003.0013
Gotler, J. (2016). Exploiting intellectual property rights. The Movie Business Book , 87-95. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315621968-8
Hershovitz, S. (2018). Treating wrongs as wrongs: An expressive argument for tort law. Journal of Tort Law , 10 (2), 405-447. https://doi.org/10.1515/jtl-2017-0004
Mohammad, J., Quoquab, F., Halimah, S., & Thurasamy, R. (2019). Workplace internet leisure and employees’ productivity. Internet Research , 29 (4), 725-748. https://doi.org/10.1108/intr-05-2017-0191
