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Because Frank Dorrian visited WSITC in April 2011, he got wind of a good idea of a mobile phone application for parking meters in Parramatta City Council's ParraConnect program. He got a State Government Grant 'Collaborative Solutions Program' for $168,000 in June 2011 and did it for Parramatta City Council in spite of no tender. Parramatta City Council accepted this service paid for by the State Government and did not notify any of the other Expressions of Interest participants from WSITC like ourselves so we only found out in February 2012 that it had all happened.
This shows you how dangerous it is to share an idea with a 3rd party like WSITC that a competitor with more overseas resources can snap up with their vast business acumen and wipe out less resourced companies like mine. It is not wise to share intellectual property with a city council unless there is a non-disclosure agreement to prevent others taking that idea and capitalizing on it as so often happens in the computer industry. Many others copy good ideas and the owner of the idea gets nothing like me.
See ParraConnect press release by us to see how bad this whole thing turned out for us.
In 2012, USA is attempting to enact laws (Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act) to allow record, music and video companies to remove sites that infringe copyright. The whole domain is removed not just the offending material destroying the good with the bad, very draconian.
In 2011:
In 2010 and 2011, Australian and NSW Governments are allowing contractors to reuse or retain ownership of software intellectual property:
In 1998, what Dwight Walker did in developing Web indexing tools, technology and training was too little too late in regards to protecting his intellectual property from those coming afterwards! Hence he went into Web design, Web portals and mobile phones to escape becoming extinct. Even that needed to be supplemented by music to survive.
Be very wary of sharing your ideas with Americans or other bigger more advanced countries. They will copy you and not pay royalties. They are much quicker on the uptake than Australians and will not include you in their plans. Free Trade Agreements usually favour the bigger country too.
Australians tend to be net importers of technology we've found. They do not support local talent due to the cultural cringe.
Export your talents to the world if you are an Australian. Overseas people will appreciate you much more than Australians who are full of doubt and pride and are very old fashioned about stopping the under-class designing and building something without being exploited by the higher-up people in the food chain. Australians like the status quo and crushing innovation to protect vested interests. Witness the cartels that are being uncovered every year in the Australian Stock Exchange between competitors that are using price-fixing to increase prices to their advantage. Contrary to popular opinion that Melbourne is more old-fashioned, Sydney is the most conservative city in Australia, especially the Eastern Suburbs and North Shore.