The former Apple engineer who worked on Apple’s “Find my iPhone” feature is suing the company to get them to acknowledge his role as inventor, and to compensate him for unfair dismissal.
Engineer Darren Eastman wants his name to be added to five Apple patent applications. He also wants Apple shares he claims were taken from him unfairly, plus damages.
The “Find My iPhone” feature reportedly got its start in life when he lost his iPhone in 2008 when Eastman lost his iPhone, thereby inspiring him to create a solution. Steve Jobs supposedly thought it was a “killer idea,” although Apple’s director of iTunes marketing at the time supposedly thought that customers, “would hate such a feature and feel Apple was spying on them.”
Eastman nonetheless persisted, and Apple ultimately introduced the feature in June 2010. It was later granted several utility patents for the technology — although Eastman is not mentioned as one of the inventors.
He also helped come up with an electronic ticketing technology, supposedly similar to the one features in Apple’s Passbook. Eastman was reportedly working on this technology prior to joining Apple in 2006, and declared this in an Intellectual Property Agreement he signed with the company in 2005.
Apple’s changing culture?
According to Eastman, Steve Jobs promised him in 2009 that he could, “always work for Apple and indicated that a job would always be available for him.” However, after Jobs died, this changed.
Eastman says that, post-Steve Jobs, Apple changed. “Many talented employees who’ve given part of their life for Apple were now regularly being disciplined and terminated for reporting issues they were expected to during Mr. Jobs tenure,” he said in his complaint.
He continued that:
“Cronyism and a dedicated effort to ignore quality issues in current and future products became the most important projects to perpetuate the goal of ignoring the law and minimizing tax … The executive team’s main focus is eliminating tax liability and bad PR being disseminated about Apple. No corporate responsibility exists at Apple since Mr Jobs’ death. There’s no accountability, with attempts at doing the right thing met with swift retaliation.”
Eastman ran into problems with his manager, and in 2014 was fired from Apple, which cited unprofessional and inappropriate communications as the reason. Eastman claims that he was the subject to discrimination. Darren Eastman is representing himself in the case. He is asking for the return of 735 Apple shares he claims he is entitled to, plus $326,400 in damages, $32,640 in interest, and $5,000 in attorney’s fees.
Source: The Register
