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Essay on Sheila Mason and Craig Shepherd

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1. What are the most important issues confronting Sheila Mason? Explain you priority of important issues. The most important issue confronting Sheila is that her previous company, ATS, is claiming she may be in violation of her Employee Noncompetition, Nonsolicitation, Nondisclosure and Development Agreement that she signed when she was hired by the company. The day after she quit she began officially working for her own company, which ATS indicates is in direct competition with its own business. Her agreement with her former employer indicates that she cannot be involved directly or indirectly with another company for a period of one year after leaving ATS that is in competition with ATS. Mason also has another issue with the …show more content…

This was a direct result of Shepherd disclosing information to his boss that revealed his invention. This is by far the most pressing issue for Shepherd because if he is unable to fully protect his invention from his employer, none of the remaining issues even matter. Nova does not develop any type of translation engine themselves, however they are in the business of rewriting applications to run on new systems. This demonstrates to Nova that Shepherd could have used knowledge gained while working at Nova to develop the translation engine. This also brings up the issue of the translation engine he developed being in direct competition with Nova's current business. Another issue confronting Shepherd is that the software he created, even though it was development during his own personal time using his own personal machine, it was created while he was currently an employee at Nova. Disclosing this information to his employer gives them enough justification to claim ownership of that software. As agreed by Shepherd when joining Nova, they claim all ownership of any ideas or software that Shepherd generates while he is an employee of the company. 3. What is your evaluation of the non-disclosure agreement (NDA)? Would you sign this as a venture capitalist? Why or why not? The non-disclosure agreement presented by Mason and Shepherd seeks to safe guard their idea, such

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