TO: Cordell M. Parvin, Esq.
FROM: Peter R. Rony
DATE: April 5, 1980
SUBJECT: Possible Bill of Complaint concerning royalties and copyrights for books that I have written
On March 19, 1980, you asked me to provide you with a memorandum stating, in chronological order, the facts associated with the books that I have written. As I understand it, you are considering requesting the court to return the copyrights to me as well as past royalties.
1. In the spring of 1974, Larsen and I collaborated on the teaching of an electronics course in the chemistry department at Virginia Tech for chemical engineering COOP students. We decided to do something quite novel: teach the students digital electronics, rather than analog electronics or circuit theory, as their first exposure to the field. In February, 1974, I quickly wrote a series of eleven “Experiments in Digital Electronics” without any assistance from Larsen. [2009 NOTE: I now call this workbook "Bugbook 0", knowing well that the Roman number system never did understand the concept of "0".] He developed some seven—segment display Outboard modules (electronic hardware) without any assistance from me, and together we tried out our new approach. It worked.
2. The early laboratory periods of the course being clearly successful, we decided to try to contact a manufacturer who would sell the hardware that Larsen developed, called Outboards. A selling point that we had was that the hardware would be supported by one or two textbooks that would contain experiments using the hardware. We contacted two companies, Heath Company and E&L Instruments, Inc. Heath was not interested, but E&L was. This activity (of contacting the companies) (sic) occurred in early April, 1974.
3. The understandings that Dave Larsen and I had at this point of our collaboration were as follows:
a. Our objective, in contacting the companies, was to obtain royalties on the marketing of the hardware developed by Larsen. We felt that this was possible based upon the precedent of Heath Company’s educational electronic equipment developed by Howard Malmstadt and Chris Enke, professors of chemistry at midwest universities.
b. I would work on the textbook(s), and we would attempt to get them published by a traditional publisher of books.
c. We would collaborate in this venture, and SHARE in the royalties, control, and recognition from both the hardware and the software. We would both participate in negotiations and in the signing of documents.
d. We would not request any advances, nor would we sell the ideas we had to any company. Rather, we would take the risk, along with the company, and hope to obtain a higher return in the form of royalties. The more successful the product, the greater the royalty return.
e. We were not in a position to engage into any manufacturing operations, since we were full-time employees at the university.
f. The work on the hardware or software was not inconsistent with our university positions, since the material developed was directly useful in our coursework.
g. We felt that we had a more modern approach than the Malmstadt - Enke “Electronics for Scientists” approach, and felt that we had considerable opportunity to gain professional recognition. The unique aspect of our approach was the fact that we used integrated circuits directly on solderless breadboards, and that therefore our equipment was easily 10% of the cost of the Malmstadt - Enke equipment.
4. During the second or third week of April, 1974, Larsen and I visited the E&L headquarters in Connecticut and showed them, in confidence, our ideas on the hardware as well as the eleven-experiment “Experiments in Digital Electronics” manuscript. E&L was extremely interested in the software, because they had been told by a consultant previously that they had to provide written material to show how their customers could use their products. We told them that we would work with them provided that they accept our package, both the hardware developed by Larsen and the software written, or to be written, by myself.
5. During the spring, 1974 Pittsburgh Analytical Conference, Larsen was contacted by representatives of IBM Corporation, who asked him if he could provide a short course for them in East Fishkill, New York in which we would teach them how to interface their semiconductor analysis equipment to an IBM minicomputer. We agreed to give such a course, scheduled it for late August, 1974, and had all short course revenues go to the chemistry department to support graduate students in that department. [As an aside, I never received a letter of thanks from the department head of chemistry for my contribution to this support.] This scheduled short course provided a target date for the writing of my book(s) on digital electronics.
6. Starting in June, 1974, and continuing until early August, 1974, I wrote three books, that ultimately became known as “Bugbook I,” “Bugbook II,” and “Bugbook IIA,” which totaled 350 pages, 350 pages, and 70 pages, respectively. I drew all of the pen-and-ink line drawings, typed all of the copy (including the final copy from which the book was photographed), developed the pedagogical approach, developed the experiments, etc. Larsen had very little input into this entire process, and little to offer of an editorial nature since he did not know how to write very well. The important assistance, of a pedagogical nature, that I received on campus was from Roberts Braden. I did most of the work during early and late evenings, and on weekends. It was an extremely busy period of time for me. Since I can type close to “final copy” the first time, there was no need for repeated drafts of the books.
7. The Bugbooks I and II were published by Southern Printing, Blacksburg, on August 20, 1974 and August 24, 1974, respectively. I also supervised the coordination of the printing operations. Bugbook IIA was mimeographed, and not published as a bound book. We used this material late in August at IBM. I kept to my promise, and placed Larsen’s name as co-author (even listing him first on one of the books) as well as a copyright co-holder. I did this because I was a man of my word. From a professional point of view, since he did not contribute to the writing of the books, he really did not belong as either an author or copyright holder.
8. Bugbooks I and II were copyrighted on September 3, 1974.
9. By the late summer, 1974 or perhaps fall, 1974, Jon Titus, who had joined our group, began to work on a “teaching” microcomputer ultimately known as the MD-I. The computer was based upon a second-generation microprocessor chip called the 8080, manufactured by Intel Corporation. The microcomputer was novel in that it contained a solderless breadboard, which permitted students to access the “busses” of the microcomputer directly, without soldering. This was the first time that solderless breadboarding and computer interfacing were tied together, and represented an educational innovation of which Titus can be proud. E&L became interested in this microcomputer, and agreed to market it provided that a book would be written. I agreed to write such a book.
10. Late in spring, 1975 (perhaps May, 1975), I began to slowly work on the book, which ultimately became known as Bugbook III, once I was given a prototype by Jon Titus to play around with. The book writing intensified during the summer, 1975, and I finished it by the middle of August, 1975. I wrote the book myself, with essentially no writing assistance from either Larsen or Titus. I drew pencil sketches of many of the drawings, and Chip Wilson, an employee of Tychon, Inc., traced over them as originally drawn. Thus, the organization of the pen-and-ink line drawings was also my creation. Titus was very busy with further development of the microcomputer, as well as with the development of manufacturing capability for the device in Blacksburg. E&L Instruments, Inc. provided some advance funds for me, perhaps in the neighborhood of $3000, to speed up my writing of the book.
11. Bugbook III was published on August 18, 1975. True to my original promise, I placed both Larsen’s and Titus’ names as coauthors and copyright coholders. The book was copyrighted on September 17, 1975.
12. Bugbook IIA, all 70 pages of it, was published by E&L Instruments, Inc. on April 24, 1975. I wrote the entire book, and did all of the line drawings. The book was printed in Blacksburg by Southern Printing Company. The book was copyrighted on July 21, 1975, in the names of Larsen and Rony as copyright holders.
13. By the end of summer, 1975, I had written four books--Bugbooks I, II, IIA, and III--yet I had not received much in the way of royalties. There were start-up expenses associated with both Nanotran and Tychon, and so I tried to understand and hoped that a bit of (sic) forbearance initially would reap returns later. Nevertheless, I was disturbed that I was not receiving any royalties.
14. The royalties disbursement matter came to a head on April 6, 1976, when Myriam Rony took matters into her own hands, went to the Nanotran/Tychon business premises, and challenged Jon Titus on why no royalties had been distributed. This was an unpleasant task, and neither Dave nor I at the time wanted to challenge Jon directly on this matter, for fear of causing the collaboration to be destroyed. Soon thereafter, regular monthly royalty disbursements began by Nanotran, both on the books and on the Outboards hardware from E&L Instruments, Inc. royalty income.
By this time, Jon Titus was working on a better and less-expensive educational microcomputer, which he called the “Dyna-Micro.” I will comment more on this subject later.
15. Late in 1975, or early in 1976, I started to write more experiments for future books. The subjects were the following:
The 8255 programmable peripheral interface chip
· How to use a Telequipment oscilloscope
· How to use a 555 timer square wave generator, in conjunction with resistors and capacitors, to learn about transient circuit behavior in analog systems
· How to use the 741 operational amplifier
· How to use voltage regulator chips
· How to use AD757O analog—to—digital and AD7522 digital—to—analog converters.
I wrote all of this material myself, and drew all of the line drawings. Some of the analog electronics material was tested in a Larsen Chem 4062 course during spring, 1976, or perhaps spring, 1977.
16. During October to December, 1975, Jon Titus developed a new educational microcomputer, the Dyna-Micro, that he felt was less expensive and more effective than the unsuccessful MD-l microcomputer marketed by E&L. The problem with the MD-I was that it was too expensive. Jon Titus did all of this development work by himself, with no assistance from either Larsen or myself. He wrote a series of three articles on the microcomputer, which were published in the May, June, and July, 1976 issues of Radio—Electronics magazine. Keep in mind that such a magazine needs about three months advance notice for any article. The May, 1976 article was the feature story.
17. To help launch Jon’s new microcomputer, which E&L wanted to market, I stopped my writing mentioned in item 15 above, and started to write a new pair of books for the MMD-l microcomputer, as it ultimately was called. I do not recall the exact date that I started, but it probably was in January, 1976 or during the December Christmas vacation in 1975. My teaching load was much heavier, so I informed Titus and Larsen that I could not write any book in only two or three months, as I had done with Bugbooks I, II, and III. I suggested that I write the book on a chapter-by-chapter basis, and that several chapters would be bound and sold as a “module” for what would ultimately become Bugbook V.
18. As I had promised years previously, I placed Larsen, and now Titus, as co-authors on the modules associated with Bugbook V. The dates of publication, by Southern Printing Company in Blacksburg, and copyright, can be summarized as follows:
Module Number Printing Date Copyright Date
One May15,1976 December 3, 1976
Two June 1,1976 December 3, 1976
Three October 8, 1976 December 3, 1976
Four October 8, 1976 December 3, 1976
Five October 8, 1976 December 3, 1976
Six October 18, 1976 December 3, 1976
Seven October 18, 1976 December 3, 1976
“Supplement” June 10, 1976 December 3, 1976
In looking through the modules, I detect some discrepancy in the dates that appear in the modules themselves, and the above printing dates. I cannot explain why the discrepancy exists, but the dates below certainly must be viewed as being accurate. Keep in mind that, when I filled out the copyright forms in December, 1976, I was quite late in doing so. Listed below are the printing dates, and printing locations, listed in the modules themselves.
Module Number Printed Date of First Printing Location
One March, 1976 Blacksburg
Two March, 1976 Blacksburg
Three September, 1976 Vermont
Four September, 1976 Vermont
Five September, 1976 Vermont
Six September, 1976 (?) Vermont
Seven September, 1976 (?) Vermont
“Supplement” March, 1976 Blacksburg
Interestingly enough, though Larsen, Rony and Titus were listed as coauthors, only Rony and Larsen were listed as copyright co-holders on these modules.
I wrote all of the material in these modules, without any assistance from Larsen or Titus. I drew all of the pen-and-ink line drawings, or borrowed existing drawings from my originals from Bugbooks I and II. The books contained new material on 8080 programming, and a revised version of some of the chapters in Bugbooks I and II. The idea of mine was to write an integrated microcomputer/digital electronics book in which the reader starts at the microcomputer level and then returns to basic digital electronics.
As you can also see, the first two modules, One and Two, and the “Supplement” (which showed a reader how to adapt Bugbook III to the new MMD-l microcomputer) were ready in time for the Jon Titus articles on the MMD-l in Radio-Electronics magazine.
As you can also observe, the writing of the remaining modules, Three through Seven, occurred during the summer of 1976, and was my primary activity during that time, in addition to research. I was busy that summer, and could accomplish less writing.
19. On May 24, 1976, an agreement was signed between Howard W. Sams & Co., Inc. and Rony, Larsen, and Titus to adapt Bugbook III and publish it as “The 8O80A
Bugbook: Microcomputer Interfacing and Programming.” I did all of the revisions on this book, which was published in May, 1977, I believe. The reason for doing this was because Bugbook III was already obsolete. The MD-l microcomputer (the subject of Bugbook III) was not a commercial success, and the new MMD-l microcomputer replaced it. My feeling was that it would be possible to continue some life to the Bugbook III by revising it. Interestingly enough, it has proved to be an extremely popular book, even now, and is the best seller in our entire series of Howard Sams books.
20. I continued to work on additional software for the MMD-l microcomputer. I finished about five or six additional chapters, and Bugbooks V and VI were finally published, in their entirety (about 900 pages long) during May, 1977.
21. Rony, Larsen, and Titus were listed as coauthors and co-copyright holders on Bugbook V. Bugbook V was copyrighted in October 6, 1977. It was published on May 30, 1977.
22. Rony, Larsen, Jon Titus were listed as coauthors and co-copyright holders on Bugbook VI. Bugbook VI was copyrighted on October 6, 1977. It was published on May 20, 1977.
23. Royalties for the Bugbook V modules and also Bugbook V were to be split 33%/33%/33% among Rony, Larsen and Titus.
24. Royalties for Bugbook VI were to be split 25%/25%/25%/25% among Rony, Larsen, Jon Titus, and Chris Titus.
25. I expected to have royalty returns from the MMD-l microcomputer hardware. I never received any! In the May 31, 1977 breakfast meeting minutes, there
is the following statement:
3. We will start to distribute the MMD-1 and perhaps the BRS royalties with the next royalty statement from E&L.
This never occurred. The BRS stands for “Bugbook Reference Series,” which I will talk about next.
26. For the first several years of the existence of Nanotran and Tychon, I was the primary writer of the group. I did the writing, shared my royalties, author recognition, and copyrights with the understanding that my colleagues would do the same with their hardware or software. Up to September, 1976, I had written Bugbooks I, II, IIA, III, and V (modules), and neither Larsen nor Titus had written any books.
When I re-directed my attention from the material mentioned in Item 15 in this listing to the Bugbook V modules, an opportunity came up for us to enlist other authors. The first such author was Howard Berlin.
27. Near the end of 1976, Christopher Titus finished his work for a Ph.D. degree in the Department of Chemistry at VPI&SU. During 1977, we equalized the ownership of Nanotran and Tychon to bring Chris Titus in as a full and equal partner, even though he had not contributed significantly to any revenues generated by Nanotran up to that point.
Initially, Nanotran ownership was 4/11 Rony, 4/11 Larsen, and 3/11 Jon Titus. At a Nanotran stockholder’s meeting, on February 1, 1977, a motion was made and passed (sic) to pay “past consulting fees” due Rony, Larsen, and Jon Titus at the rate of 10% per year. Basically, this was concerned with the buy-in by Chris Titus. Unfortunately, no amount was indicated in the minutes, nor was any calculation procedure for determining the amount provided. To this date, I still do not know how they arrived at the figure.
On September 23, 1977, ownership of Tychon and Nanotran was equalized among the four of us. We had separate Nanotran and Tychon stockholder’s meetings.
28. Howard Berlin published his first book with us, “The 555 Timer Applications Sourcebook, with Experiments,” in November, 1976. I expected to share in one-fourth of the royalties that would go to Nanotran, but never received anything ever. I had little to do with the book.
29. In April 1977, Howard Berlin published his second book with us, “The Design of Active Filters, with Experiments.” I never received any share of the royalties from this book either. I had little to do with it.
30. In October, 1977, Howard Berlin published his third book with us, “The Design of Operational Amplifier Circuits, with Experiments.” Again, though I expected to share in the Nanotran royalty income on this book, I never did.
31.
NOTES:
I have many additional duties besides writing this chronology, so I must stop at this point and go to other matters. Is this material of use to you, Cordell, as you contemplate writing another Bill of Complaint? I have to work on other matters in the chronology, and it begins to get complicated. Let me provide some highlights.
· In 1977, Paul Goldsbrough enters the picture. He is supposed to finish my work on the 8255 book, and list me, among others, as coauthor and copyright co-holder. He finishes the book after two years, but omits me from the copyright notice and does not place me as a full coauthor. The book was published in July, 1979.
· NCR Corporation permits us to revise one of their books, in 1978, and have it published. I do the job along with someone from E&L Instruments, Inc. , Mr. Gary Oliwa. I never receive any share of royalties from this book.
· The MMD-l microcomputer royalties are never shared with me.
· The “outside author” royalties are never shared with me.
· The MD-l microcomputer (the first microcomputer) royalties are finally shared, but by the time they are, such royalties are miniscule.
· Howard W. Sams, early in 1978, becomes interested in publishing our entire series. Nanotran signs the contract as the AUTHOR, rather than letting me sign. This was done behind my back.
· Early in 1978, the contact with SGS-ATES in Italy becomes firm, and Joe and Betsy Nichols are enlisted to adapt Bugbooks V and VI for use with a Z8O microcomputer. My understanding was that I would share in the copyrights on these books, as well as royalties. This whole matter became messy in spring, 1979.
· By summer, 1978, I was openly complaining about not receiving any MMD-l hardware royalties, which by then had been substantial. My complaints were ignored.
· Numerous things happened starting March 14, 1979, when I informed my colleagues that I wanted to withdraw. The actions are summarized in several memos, which I can summarize in this chronological listing if you so desire.
· The land partnership, specially the 200 acres, was supposed to be Larsen’s contribution to the group effort, in return for all the work that Titus had done on hardware and I had done on software. Larsen would manage it at no charge, and would get good land deals.