Pilot Sues Delta For $1 Billion Claiming the Airline Stole Crew App (bloomberg.com) 83
Delta Air Lines was sued for more than $1 billion by one of its own pilots, who claims he developed a text-messaging app for flight crews that the airline stole and used as the basis for its own app. Bloomberg reports: Captain Craig Alexander sued Atlanta-based Delta for trade-secrets theft in Georgia state court on Monday. He claims he spent $100,000 of his own money to develop his QrewLive app, which he pitched to the airline as a way to address crew communication snafus after disrupted flights. Delta turned him down but went on to launch its own identical tool, he claims. Delta "stole like a thief in the night" and defrauded its own loyal employee, Keenan Nix, a lawyer for Alexander, said Wednesday in an interview. He said Alexander, an 11-year veteran at the airline, was flying a Delta 757 "as we speak."
A five-hour power outage that resulted in hundreds of flight cancellations in August 2016 cost Delta more than $150 million. The pilot said in the suit he emailed Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian at the time saying "he had a 'solution.'" Bastian allegedly responded promptly and referred Alexander to the company's new chief information officer. Bastian and the CIO, Rahul Samant, are both named in the suit, along with four other Delta executives. Alexander claims he had several positive meetings with the airline in 2015 and 2016 in which executives made clear they were interested in acquiring his app. But Delta eventually cut off discussions and then launched its own crew app in April 2018, called Flight Family Communications. "'FFC' is a carbon copy, knock-off of the role-based text messaging component of Craig's proprietary QrewLive communications platform," Alexander said in his suit.
The pilot noted in his suit that Bastian and Samant have both bragged to investors that the app has smoothed operations. In describing the damages he's seeking, Alexander said the value of the technology, "based solely upon operational cost savings to Delta, conservatively exceeds $1 billion." Alexander is also seeking punitive damages against Delta. "To add insult to theft and injury, Captain Craig Alexander must use his stolen QrewLive text messaging platform every day while he works for Delta," the suit claims. "Each time he looks at the FFC app, he is painfully reminded that Delta stole his proprietary trade secrets, used them to Delta's enormous financial benefit." "While we take the allegations specified in Mr. Alexander's complaint seriously, they are not an accurate or fair description of Delta's development of its internal crew messaging platform," said Morgan Durrant, a Delta spokesperson.
A five-hour power outage that resulted in hundreds of flight cancellations in August 2016 cost Delta more than $150 million. The pilot said in the suit he emailed Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian at the time saying "he had a 'solution.'" Bastian allegedly responded promptly and referred Alexander to the company's new chief information officer. Bastian and the CIO, Rahul Samant, are both named in the suit, along with four other Delta executives. Alexander claims he had several positive meetings with the airline in 2015 and 2016 in which executives made clear they were interested in acquiring his app. But Delta eventually cut off discussions and then launched its own crew app in April 2018, called Flight Family Communications. "'FFC' is a carbon copy, knock-off of the role-based text messaging component of Craig's proprietary QrewLive communications platform," Alexander said in his suit.
The pilot noted in his suit that Bastian and Samant have both bragged to investors that the app has smoothed operations. In describing the damages he's seeking, Alexander said the value of the technology, "based solely upon operational cost savings to Delta, conservatively exceeds $1 billion." Alexander is also seeking punitive damages against Delta. "To add insult to theft and injury, Captain Craig Alexander must use his stolen QrewLive text messaging platform every day while he works for Delta," the suit claims. "Each time he looks at the FFC app, he is painfully reminded that Delta stole his proprietary trade secrets, used them to Delta's enormous financial benefit." "While we take the allegations specified in Mr. Alexander's complaint seriously, they are not an accurate or fair description of Delta's development of its internal crew messaging platform," said Morgan Durrant, a Delta spokesperson.
Did he Patent IT? (Score:1)
Did he Patent IT?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Did he Patent IT? (Score:5, Insightful)
IANL, but unless he had Delta sign an NDA before he showed them his app, he's probably hosed. You can't go telling people your trade secrets and still have them be secret.
An interesting question is if Delta makes its employees sign an intellectual property agreement. Most large companies do, but airlines may not see it as necessary. If the guy did sign one of those, the company may own his invention anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Trade secrets are a form of IP, so you'd probably want an IP lawyer if you're going to fight on those grounds.
If this is the same Keenan Nix, https://www.forthepeople.com/a... [forthepeople.com] his practice areas are: "Business Tort Litigation, Medical Malpractice, Personal Injury, Premises Liability, Wrongful Death".
Re: (Score:2)
You left off "Ambulance Chaser".
He's probably a relative or neighbor of the plaintiff who heard him complain and said, "I can get you a shit-ton of money."
Re: (Score:2)
Came for the competing NDA vs. intellectual property rights of your employer comments. Leaving satisfied. Thank you!
Re: (Score:3)
The functionality of the app is pretty obvious. So unless he showed Delta his source code, it is unlikely any trade secrets were disclosed. It is also unlikely he has a patent because of the obviousness, and also, TFA would have mentioned it.
It is plausible that Delta developed its app completely independently, and any similarity is just a convergence on the obvious functionality.
Bottom line: He is hosed, but that's ok because he didn't create anything of value.
Re:Did he Patent IT? (Score:5, Insightful)
The functionality of the app is pretty obvious. So unless he showed Delta his source code, it is unlikely any trade secrets were disclosed. It is also unlikely he has a patent because of the obviousness, and also, TFA would have mentioned it.
It is plausible that Delta developed its app completely independently, and any similarity is just a convergence on the obvious functionality.
Bottom line: He is hosed, but that's ok because he didn't create anything of value.
Many things are obvious in retrospect, many multi-billion dollar companies are built on seemingly obvious bits of functionality. If he didn't create anything of value he wouldn't have gotten meetings with senior executives nor would Delta be bragging about the cost savings of the identical app.
As to the lawsuit, I don't know if Delta is in legal trouble, but ripping off your own employee is a pretty ugly problem both for PR and employee morale. I could see Delta giving him a decent settlement just to clean up from that perspective.
Re: (Score:2)
"he wouldn't have gotten meetings with senior executives"
We have only Craig Alexander's claim that they were executives thus far, and even he doesn't describe them as "senior".
"nor would Delta be bragging about the cost savings of the identical app"
We have only Craig Alexander claim that it is an identical app thus far. Furthermore, we have not seen what if any intellectual property disclosure agreement Craig Alexander required before presenting to those executives. Trade secrets are what the interested par
Re: Did he Patent IT? (Score:2)
Re: Did he Patent IT? (Score:2)
Re:Did he Patent IT? (Score:4)
It is pretty obvious what happened, Delta Airlines the corporation stole nothing, the executives above him, stole his idea, and pocketed the bonuses and simply fucked him over. Now the corporation, has demonstrated the psychopathy executives over the engineer and although they know the executives stole it and the bonuses for themselves, the corporation got a better deal that way and the board are all psychopaths as well.
For psychopaths it is not how creative or inventive or loyal you are, they prefer fellow psychopath thieves, those who shameless steal ideas and claim them, they are more productive, nahh, just fellow psychos they have dirt on now. So the reward the thieves and give the actual productive employee a kick in the arse.
Re:Did he Patent IT? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is plausible that Delta developed its app completely independently, and any similarity is just a convergence on the obvious functionality.
Perhaps you want to read the summary?
He was in talks with the CEO and CIO, for months, if not a year. So it is not plausible that they developed it independently.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It is more than entirely possible that more than one person at Delta thought something like this would be useful and that they were going to deploy their application whether this pilot said anything or not
Yes it is possible.
But: did you actually read the summary? Because it is pretty clear: that is not what happened.
Re: (Score:2)
A chat app is not high tech by any means, it's entirely plausible that Delta was working on their own but talked to the guy to see if he had something superior to what they were building.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, from the summary it is pretty clear: it is not a chat app. /. call it that - that is all.
People on
it's entirely plausible that Delta was working on their own but talked to the guy to see if he had something superior to what they were building.
No it is not.
Its is pretty clear from the summary that he triggered Delta to clone his app.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a bit difficult to believe that this one pilot was the only person in the entire airline industry to see a need for an app of this type. People give themselves credit for far too much insight.
Amazon got sued for supposedly "stealing" someone else's program, when in actuality they had been developing their own version of that functionality for a year before the other even appeared on the market. It was insisted in court that somehow Amazon's developer had stolen his ideas before he started developing i
in an UNION JOB? (Score:1)
in an UNION JOB?
Re: (Score:2)
in an UNION JOB?
Pilot unions are some of the most aggressive around, especially since they have the airlines by the balls. Gotta pay for the boats, beach house and divorces some way.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It is plausible that Delta developed its app completely independently, and any similarity is just a convergence on the obvious functionality.
Yes it has. It is clearly written in the summary.
Re: (Score:2)
An app which smooths flight operations [...] has nothing to do with pilots or flight.
We may need to disagree.
Re: (Score:2)
IANL, but unless he had Delta sign an NDA before he showed them his app, he's probably hosed. You can't go telling people your trade secrets and still have them be secret.
An interesting question is if Delta makes its employees sign an intellectual property agreement. Most large companies do, but airlines may not see it as necessary. If the guy did sign one of those, the company may own his invention anyway.
It would depend on the details of the IP agreement, IMH IANAL O. I signed one at a previous employer but it covered things developed while on company time. Of course , "company time" was rather vague given as a consultant I was paid a salary, logged billable hours and was on the beach at times. I would imagine there are grey areas for flight crews as well? If they are on a layover collecting per diem and hotel is covered, is that company time?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Trade secrets are inventions that are specifically not patented since the latter are public. The terms of what constitutes the trade secret and how it is disclosed are agreed to by the interested parties before disclosure, i.e. a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). If Craig Alexander did not obtain such an agreement before disclosing his invention, it is is hard for him to claim that his invention was even a trade secret let alone that Delta improperly disclosed it.
All this is independent of whether Delta's app
Re: (Score:2)
I highly doubt he would be granted a patent even if he applied for one... I've been involved with several software projects and it's extremely difficult to get a patent granted over a strictly software "idea" because the USPTO often sees those as "abstract ideas" and will refuse to grant patents for them. Especially for software that is very similar to already existing "prior art" out there (in this case, any IM platform or SMS/private messaging software already in use.)
More info here on the USPTO website [uspto.gov]
Par for the course (Score:2)
Happens all the time - large companies take ideas by other people, then turn around and implement them without paying the author. I hope he wins the entire amount.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It really depends on the contract they have with that employee.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Role based chat isn't something that is novel or new
Re:Par for the course (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen this a million times, someone who had an idea for a piece of software and thought they were going to get rich from it, only to get crushed because they aren't offering anything others can't do more cheaply.
If you want to make money from an *idea* you have to protect that idea with patents and NDAs; patents aren't cheap, and NDAs make it harder to sell. That's the reason ideas have so little economic value. In practice you can't prevent other people from "stealing" (i.e., *using*) your idea.
I spent many years selling a vertical market app, and you have to bear this in mind: if the only thing that protects your software is copyright, the customer *always* has the right to create their own in-house version of your app. Your value proposition has to be simple: paying *me* is the cheapest and safest way to get this.
If this guy thought he was going to make millions from an unprotected idea and $100k of contract programming time, he didn't think his business plan through. There's simply no way it would make sense for Delta to send him millions of dollars for something their own in-house teams could likely do in about a month. What's more, this guy isn't a professional software development outfit with a track record of being responsive to customer needs and history of reasonable product management; they'd be committing to a long term vendor relationship with an amateur. In the end it's bound to be safer and *much* cheaper for Delta just to take his idea.
That's crappy for him, but everyone who has ever sold vertical market apps has had to face that acid test: is it cheaper and safer to buy from this guy or do it myself?
Re: (Score:1)
It could be that Delta used actual designs and clearly copied UX components that saved them a ton of time compared to when a non-initiated team would've created the same app. So he might have saved them a ton of R&D time.
So lots of talk and discussion here, but we just don't know the full story here. A billion seems steep though, but paying him for actual time spent seems fair.
Re: (Score:2)
A billion seems steep though, but paying him for actual time spent seems fair.
Delta will move to dismiss this lawsuit on legal grounds, and if that is unsuccessful paying him and his lawyers for time spent is where this will likely end up. Realistically he could have sold the whole thing to them for a quick and tidy profit, but the dream of turning a good idea into a cash cow got in the way.
As others have pointed out, his bid probably ultimately foundered on systems integration. The thing he brought to the table was an understanding of the problem from the end-user's perspective, b
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
This. This is exactly right - ideas are easy and cheap.
The only thing I'd add is whether or not Delta engaged in what appeared to be good-faith negotiations about licensing or acquiring his technology. A lot hinges on that statement that Delta "indicated they'd be willing to purchase on the same terms as a 3rd party vendor."
Re: Par for the course (Score:1)
If you look at companies with more experience in that area: Apple's policy is "If you want to tell us an idea officially, we are free to use it in any way we want. If you want to tell us an idea unofficially we will ignore it." They won't sign any NDA. So you won't make money, and you have no chance of suing them. If you think "it would be
This will be tough to win (Score:2)
This will be a tough, maybe impossible win, right? Delta executives and their lawyers probably go home with all the $$$.
Unless he got Delta to sign an unusually restrictive agreement with him before discussing the app, assuming they didn't lift the actual source code or build based on his technical spec... The basic concept and functional characteristics of a messaging App are not likely protectable as "secrets"; Hell there are tons of messaging apps on the App store - Microsoft Teams... Why, there
Pragmatic reason why Delta should have paid up (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Pragmatic reason why Delta should have paid up (Score:2)
Depends, he's treating this like a lottery, not a business venture
Re:Pragmatic reason why Delta should have paid up (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
This is Delta we're talking about. "something new" could mean anything from actually offering customer service, landing a plane smoothly, or getting to the destination on time.
Re: (Score:2)
Except it's encouraged. Pilots train a lot because a lot of instinctive reactions are wrong. But there are only so many checklists and a lot of flying is analyzing what's going on and figuring out what ot do.
Pilots who have followed the checklist strictly have gotten themselves into trouble because the checklists aren't always correct - pilots who think what the checklist is doing often have
Re: (Score:2)
Pragmatic reason why Delta should have paid up: if they don't, what are the chances of employees doing this sort of very valuable R&D again? You want to encourage creativity in your people.
Do you think that matters to the CIO? He would have left the company by then, already pocketed the fat bonus he got now.
Probably asked for too much $$$ (Score:5, Insightful)
Valuation is a complicated subject, and a ton of software pricing is REALLY stupid. Oh this software will save you $1 billion in labor costs/lost revenu/whatever per year? I guess I can charge you $800,000,000!! You save $200,000,000 and we both win.
But if I can write the software from scratch for less than 800,000,000 then guess what... I will.
Airline probably shopped the specs around and someone said, yeah... its a pretty basic text messaging app with a few custom permissions/role management items, and they could build it in 4 months for $250,000 or something, and then did.
If he didn't have an NDA then there's not much chance of a trade secret lawsuit flying, and even then I'm not sure what secret sauce his 'trade secret' would be.
Copyright won't help much, as it was likely developed indepdentantly, the UI, if they copied right down to the pixel might give him some legs to stand on, but if the similarity is that it looks like any text messaging app he's boned.
Patents ... meh...i doubt there is anything actually worthy of a patent in the app, but that doesn't mean he couldn't have gotten 12 of them...
If you want to sell software for a lot of money, it best be something that your potential customers can't simply write themselves. Network effects are your best bet -- MS Office isn't an almost mandatory per user corporate subscription because nobody else can write a spreadsheet application -- its because everyone you want to send a spreadsheet to has excel and expects excel, and everyone you hire has experience with excel. So even if you wrote a better spreadsheet and it cost half as much it would still fail... hell libreoffice is FREE and it can't get a foothold. Likewise twitter isn't worth billions because there's something especially difficult about writing a messaging app.
Bottom line, if you show up to pitch an easily recreated piece of software... its not going to be worth that much more than what it will cost them to write their own.
Re: (Score:3)
Better to ask for too much and have it be negotiated down.
Re: (Score:3)
Not if asking too much causes the customer to go shopping somewhere else.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah you're right, I misread your post.
I thought you said, "he asked for too much in the lawsuit." But actually you said, "he asked too much when he tried to sell it."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You have to wonder why he hasn't sold his app to other airlines if it's so unique and wonderful. If it's worth $1bn he should quit his job and become a full time software developer/salesman.
I have a feeling it's too generic and obvious to gain much legal protection, and he knows that if other airlines want it they will probably just go to the people already supplying their other software (bookings, timetables, staff management etc.) and get them to integrate it with existing systems.
Re: (Score:2)
Second version... (Score:2)
...will be named 2LiveQrew!
I'll see myself out...
Hosed (Score:2)
nothing novel about it (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because of: features.
Seriously, you have no idea why a special messaging app with special features is better than Signal or Telegram?
Hint: why would Delta "steal" it and implement their own, if an off the shelf messaging app would do it?
Re: (Score:2)
First thing that comes to mind is the ability for the app to work in-flight using a local server on the aircraft itself, without needing an Internet connection.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you do it right you do not need a local server, but one of the phones opens a hot spot.
However that app is about to organize the crew in a case of weird circumstances. Like flight delayed for more than 6h etc. That will happen on the airport where they are currently stuck.
While there might be a few lines of chatting happening, it is most likely more a "polling app", which gives "a green light", when all of the crew has signalled: WILCO.
If he can prove he made it first... (Score:2)
...but still loses...Could he not then say, "Okay, guess I'll sell it to a "friend" who by chance has a meeting with one of your competitors."
Re: If he can prove he made it first... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Going to be a hard sell when he already has a history of suing prospective customers.
I hope the pilot's ready for this fight (Score:3)
It's a sad fact that the side with the deepest pockets almost always wins these cases. I hope the pilot found the meanest, nastiest firm of nut-cutters in the country and promised them half of whatever they make for him. Otherwise, he's going to get screwed.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a sad fact that the side with the deepest pockets almost always wins these cases.
Not really. The side with the most legal clout wins. Unfortunately that takes the form of written contracts, patents, and trademarks which from the looks of things this guy doesn't have.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes really. The US legal system is an obscene joke. That most Americans think it's "the best in the world" only proves how utterly brainwashed many of them are.
Employee agreements and patents (Score:2)
1) The pilot should have filed a design patent first.
2) If the app was valuable to the entire airline market, then the value was far greater than the pilot's salary, and he could afford to pay engineers and lawyers to protect his invention.
3) The pilot's lawyer needs to thoroughly examine the pilot's employment agreement for intellectual property clauses - if the pilot signed something to the effect that any improvements they make to the airlines operations belong to the company then even a design patent ba
Re: (Score:2)
if the pilot signed something to the effect that any improvements they make to the airlines operations belong to the company then even a design patent based on the airlines' operation could be subject to ownership by the company.
These kinds of invention provisions are common in engineering and large corporations.
AIUI in my country unless your job involves at least some part of software development, software development is not in scope for your duties so any dev work you do you own (as long as you aren't using company resources of course).
I can't see a pilot having any software development duties at all, so it would be interesting if this was called out.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: Employee agreements and patents (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
1) The pilot should have filed a design patent first.
yea, but unless it was very unique that is likely not going to help him. Delta could easily redo the UI to avoid his patent.
2) If the app was valuable to the entire airline market, then the value was far greater than the pilot's salary, and he could afford to pay engineers and lawyers to protect his invention.
That's what I was think as well. If such an app could save Delta $1billion, it has value far beyond delta. He should have pulled together a team with legal, technical and clout in the industry, formed an LLC, pitched it to other airlines or a VC. And yes, while a pilot has credibility, adding a retired CEO would open a lot of doors as well. Having a solid team would make it much m
Re: (Score:2)
The pilot's lawyer isn't an IP specialist, he's just an average ambulance chaser. I suspect that they filed hoping to get paid to just shut up and go away.
Could be considered "work product"? (Score:2)
Just curious. This could also be a case of "there's no such thing as an original idea". Whatever you're working, chances are that at least one other party is working on the same thing and may be further along in development than you are. The concept of group/team messaging isn't original. Hell, I use something similar for search & rescue callouts. It's entirely possible that Delta IT staff was working on something like this but the pace of lumbering bureaucracy kept it from being released until aft
Ideas are overrated (Score:2)
All you have to do to prove this is download a few app store apps. Most of them--all based on ideas that the author though was great--are crap.
The hard part is executing on an idea, making it actually usable.
What exactly did Delta steal? The idea of messaging between pilots? How exactly is that an original idea? How different would Delta's messaging app have to be from this guy's messaging app, to be anything other than a "carbon copy"? Aren't just about all messaging apps out there basically "carbon copies
Delta variant (Score:3)
I guess you could call Delta's version of the app the "Delta variant"!
what's the big deal? (Score:2)