Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 13:06:00 -0400 From: reagle@rpcp.mit.edu (Joseph M. Reagle Jr.) To: reagle@rpcp.mit.edu Subject: Fla. gov. questions jailing of researcher
TALLAHASSEE, Fla., June 12 (UPI) -- Gov. Lawton Chiles said Wednesday he has ordered Florida education officials to determine whether a university researcher jailed in a patent dispute should be freed. Petr Taborsky, an undergraduate chemistry major who worked for $8.50 an hour in a laboratory at the University of South Florida, was sentenced in January to 3 1/2 years in a maximum-security prison. He had refused to sign over to the school a patent for a new way he discovered to use a substance similar to cat litter to purify water. ``I don't know what he's doing in prison,'' said Harry Singletary, Florida's prisons chief. ``We need prison beds for violent offenders, for repeat offenders. I don't see him as anybody threatening the public safety.'' Chiles' general counsel, Dexter Douglass, asked the Florida Board of Regents to look into the university's handling of what he called ``this bizarre case.'' Douglass has also asked the state's attorney general to look into the prosecution of Taborsky, ``particularly the apparent use of state funds for private attorneys to push criminal penalties.'' USF reportedly has spent more than $320,000 on the Taborsky case, in addition to the costs of staff attorneys. Taborsky's legal problems stemmed from a testing contract USF signed in 1987 with Florida Progress Corp., a utility conglomerate. The contract specified that Florida Progress would own all data and discoveries. But when Taborsky was hired to work on the project, he did not sign an employment contract forfeiting the right to profit in anything he might discover. When he left school in 1988, Taborsky took two notebooks that USF ordered him to return. When he refused, university police charged him with theft. Taborsky contended the data contained in the notebooks was from research he conducted separate from the Florida Progress project and that the utility showed no interest in it until he discovered the new water-purification method. When a jury convicted him of theft in 1990, Taborsky was sentenced to a year's house arrest, 15 years' probation and ordered to make no further use of the data. But he pursued a patent and in 1992 received the first of three for the process. USF lawyers argued that was a violation of his probation, and the court ordered Taborsky to sign over the patent to the university. He refused, and was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison. Taborsky began prison life five months ago and has been described as a model inmate. He served on a chain gang at first and by May was working at the institution's waste-water treatment plant creating computer programs to monitor the water. Singletary said within a few days, he hopes Taborsky will be in a minimum-security work-release center closer to where his parents live. ``I'm looking for the right place to put him until he can be considered for clemency or whatever else is being looked at,'' Singletary said. But at least one member of the Board of Regents defended the way USF handled the Taborsky case. ``It doesn't sound any different to me than a guy who steals books out of the library,'' said Regents Chairman James Heekin. ``What's the big deal?'' he asked.
_______________________ Regards, Laziness is no more than the habit of resting before you get tired. -Jules Renard Joseph Reagle http://farnsworth.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html reagle@mit.edu E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65 BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E