Two former National E-Health Authority employees who are pushing a self-developed alternative to individual health identifiers have been threatened with legal action by the authority for what it claims is theft of its intellectual property.
Two former National E-Health Authority employees who are pushing a self-developed alternative to individual health identifiers have been threatened with legal action by the authority for what it claims is theft of its intellectual property.
...you appear to be claiming ownership of intellectual
property of a government-funded entity and offering it back as a
business opportunity...
NEHTA lawyer, Piper Alderman partner Tom Griffith
NEHTA's charge has been to bring Australia into the e-health era
where every Australian has an electronic medical record. It has
been working with Medicare on a number for each citizen which can
be used to collate medical information.
Phillip Johnson and Peter West, who left the employment of the authority late last year, had been concerned about the
privacy implications of such a number, which could make it easier
for people to obtain personal medical information.
They worked together on a system called *DIAD, and put in two
provisional patent filings, as well as registering web domains with
the name. According to an information page on the system, instead
of using a number, it uses a handle — like in social networking —
controlled by the patient.
NEHTA's legal council has sent a legal letter to those men, which ZDNet.com.au has seen,
claiming that they worked on this system while employed at NEHTA,
and that under their contract the intellectual property therefore belongs to NEHTA.
The letter says that Johnson and West's behaviour —
including sending messages from work to home email addresses with NEHTA documents and source code attached — suggested that
they had used confidential NEHTA information to develop their idea.
The authority said the patents were filed when West was still employed by
the company.
According to the letter, Johnson wrote to NEHTA clinical leader
Dr Mukesh Haikerwal, announcing the launch of *DIAD and
spoke of "opportunities for NEHTA" which the authority assumed
would come at a price.
"That you appear to be claiming ownership of intellectual
property of a government-funded entity and offering it back as a
business opportunity presumably designed to benefit you
financially, is understandably a matter of grave concern to NEHTA,"
the letter said.
The authority also took exception to the fact that Johnson's
company Envisioneering listed NEHTA as one of its clients, although
the company had not completed any work for NEHTA.
NEHTA wanted written assurance that Johnson and West had not
extracted confidential information, and if it had occurred,
that the confidential information be returned in 10 days, with a
written undertaking that they would not use the information
again.
Johnson and West's legal advisor Lisa Honeychurch from Honeychurch Workplace Laywers and Consultant, replied in a letter. It
claimed that NEHTA had made sweeping allegations without providing
particulars on the evidence which showed that the men had used NEHTA's
information to develop *DIAD. NEHTA should have been able to
provide such details since it had information on *DIAD from when
Johnson approached it, the legal advisor believed.
Honeychurch also asked, since NEHTA was a non-profit
organisation, what its business was and what the "rival business"
was supposed to be that Johnson and West had set up. She also
pointed out that NEHTA's system was in the public domain.
If West and Johnson were trying to be underhanded, Honeychurch
claimed, they wouldn't have been so silly as to contact NEHTA
directly about the *DIAD concept.
To ensure that no confidential NEHTA documents had been retained
amongst the publicly available NEHTA documents, Johnson and West
had deleted all NEHTA documents from their systems, according to
a draft of the letter.
Johnson had made an error by placing NEHTA's name on the client
list for Envisioneering, Honeychurch said. That had been
rectified.
However, Honeychurch said that Johnson and West would not give
up the patents or domain names. She asked that NEHTA give details
of the alleged misuse of confidential information or withdraw the
allegations.
At the Council of Australian Governments meeting, the states
reiterated their intention to provide an individual health
identifier to every Australian. The legislation necessary to make
the identifier a reality is currently in draft.