Re:Google accused of stealing balloon network tech behind Pr...
by dboreham on Friday June 17, 2016 @04:22AM
(#11921263)
An NDA deals typical with disclosing of information. E.g. you visit Google to pitch your product and tell them you plan that launch it next year, or you have 200 customers signed up. The NDA says Google can't tell that stuff to the press or your competitors and possibly can't share that information with other divisions within Google (depends on the wording obviously). It would not cover "they'll copy our idea themselves". This is a standard, central concern with anyone pitching to BigCo and something you talk over and strategize about endlessly before the pitch. Everyone basically assumes it is a risk, hence the old advice "don't pitch to Microsoft", or I guess now: Google.
If this is the basis for the case then it obviously has no merit.
I mean, the basic concept and viability of an ubiquitous network of balloons providing Internet access had already been presented publicly by Space Data (see [1]), so you didn't have to violate an NDA to know that. The idea that you can control direction by changing altitude is also old as rocks (Jules Verne's Five Weeks in a Balloon is based on it).
And it's not clear to me that they actual alleged that Google copied the actual mechanism and/or used their trial tests data.
[1] http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=6520007226