If someone used a love spell on my date—even if he wasn't really a date—I'd be rather annoyed.
To keep the conversation flowing and to get back to business, I said, "Back to what we were talking about earlier, I'm curious about something. What about people coming up with something brilliant at one company, then taking it with them and starting their own company?"
"That's also something we see a lot of in software. People come up with something great, and instead of letting their employer get rich on the idea, they try to get rich for themselves. In those cases, a lot depends on whether the idea grew directly out of a work-related assignment or if it just happened to be something the employee came up with on his own while working for the company."
I frowned. This didn't look good. "What if it was something the employee came up with as part of a work assignment, but his employer wasn't happy with the direction he took it and declined to market it?"
"That's the kind of situation that pays my salary. It takes digging into documentation, doing interviews, that sort of thing, to determine what's going on. Generally, though, if the development work was done on company time using company resources, the company wins— especially if they have better lawyers."
"Is that the side you're usually on?"
"Yeah, I'm a tool of the evil corporation." He laughed. 'And now you're just being polite. There is no way you're that interested in my work. Or are you planning on stealing something from your boss?"
"Only Post-it notes and pens," I said, mustering a laugh of my own. It did sound like we needed a lawyer to deal with this situation. The trick would be finding a way to hire one without him thinking we were insane. If he turned out to be immune and they brought him in on the secret, that might help. "But I really am interested. I haven't heard of this before. I once thought about law school, but I didn't know about this field of law." I crossed my fingers under the table to counteract the lie.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a couple of men dressed like they'd just come from the gym enter the restaurant and take seats at the bar. That normally wouldn't have caught my attention—there were already several other similar men sitting at the bar, eating and watching a basketball game on the television suspended from the ceiling—but the two men were Rod and Owen. I wanted to bang my head on the table. It was bad enough faking a date with someone for business purposes without having the man I had a minor crush on be present. Now I felt doubly fake. Even worse, without Owen in the picture, I might manage to be interested in Ethan, and he was a lot closer to being somewhere in the general vicinity of my league. In fact, it looked like we might have more in common than I thought.
I forced my attention back to Ethan and gamely tried to continue the conversation, even as I dreaded what the magical dynamic duo might come up with as a test.
"What happens if a company thinks their employee has stolen something and is using it to compete against them?"
"First step is we write a nice, official cease and desist letter. In a lot of cases, that scares them into stopping. Most people don't realize what they're doing or that it's wrong. They then just have to modify their product enough to make it be something that's truly their own. It gets more complicated if there's a lot of money involved, if the original employer really suffers damages, or if the ex-employee gets defiant."
I wondered if a letter would do the trick here. I wasn't sure how we'd get a case involving stolen magic into the court system. Would that even be a credible threat?
At that moment, Ethan's nearly untouched beer disappeared, to be replaced by a bottle of Coke. I suspected most people would still see and even taste the beer.
Ethan blinked, went a little pale, picked up the bottle and studied it for a second, then laughed. "I forgot I'd ordered that. But I did say I was only going to have one beer tonight."
I wasn't sure whether to contradict him. He hadn't ordered it. The waitress had been nowhere near. He was in deep denial, but he'd definitely noticed the change.
I tried to glance as casually as possible toward the bar area. Rod raised an eyebrow at Owen in an "Okay, you try something" look. Owen bit his lip and frowned in thought, and my stomach knotted in dread. From my experience with his magical creativity, I suspected we were in for something interesting.
In the blink of an eye our nearly empty dinner dishes and glasses disappeared, to be replaced by a white linen tablecloth covering the previously bare Formica table. On top of the tablecloth were china dishes holding a sinfully rich chocolate dessert. We each had steaming mugs of cappuccino, and a crystal vase in the center of the table held a single red rosebud. I could certainly go for that kind of testing. I had to fight not to shoot a grateful glance in Owen's direction. He didn't know much more about me than I knew about him, but it looked like he'd been paying attention. During the first job interview, I'd ordered the cappuccino like it was a rare delicacy, and he knew I carried chocolate in my purse.
