Free Memorandum in Opposition to Motion - District Court of Connecticut - Connecticut

Case 3:00-cv-00705-CFD Document 137-8 Fnled O3/11/2005 Page 1 of 2
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· [email protected], 11/21/99 10:32 PM -0500; call inQ,g;L;;,g_»,,;i;_·=;~,gt_.;g;·{,g;.,__;gg;,{ ,_,;. , ·_= :,1 I _; I
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Q Fran: Bob Waterston ·;;· Y.
_ Subject: call · _ - V , · .
·. _ Ccé bwaterstEa1u . ~
, Dear John: _ · · I
Welllwe had our call, with rrancis, Harold, Eric and ue. _ Both Francis and uarold showed some · 1.
skepticism, with Eric being the salesman. He is very effective I‘a afraid and I dld¤‘t do .¤uch' more _ F.
thanslowhixudownalittle. ‘ .
4 we spent about 1 1/2 hours hashing it through. 1=h·:ic's main points are that Celera is going to have
_· the genome product people are going to tmrn to increasingly over the next jjeaxrpthat they are going to
- have n series of demoralizing press releases, that they have already spoken with Jasny about a
- possible publication nut spring including a dvd distributed with the magazzine (which they would pay
for). By agreeing to collaborate we could stop the worst of these abuses, that we could bring sune
reality to any publication by stating what the deficiencies were. In response to ny concernsabout ‘
~ being seen to validate their product, he said yes, but that it was¤‘t likely to give much value ahded, {
and would put us in a position to insist on a more accurate portrayal of what it really was -- that ' _ 4
is an intermediate product.` Celera would have its database and they would be in a monopoly position _
for a while. The failure to allow redistribution of their data would put other software companies at .
` a disadvantage but they would be"in that position regardless. I wish you could have been on the line.
· Eric was as serious as I have heard him.
we talked too about what we minimally would need to have to even think about an agreement. First, we l
would have to access to their data. We wouldn‘t get it all in bulk and o0uldn°t deal with it very . _
effectively anyway. But we would need to have access to their independent assembly presumably, as
well as the assenbly using both data sets. we would also have access to trace data for `any region _we
wished to check, for example sequence spanning a gap in a BAC, reads spanning any areas between gaps,
reads increasing the quality of a low quality area. Whether it would be feasible to look at all such
regions in the time frame under consideration is uncertain. maybe instead we would have to settle for
-· some sampling and reporting on what we found. p `
The data would have to be available at a third party site (secure to satisfy Celera's needs) and
perhaps specific traces would be able 'to imported to GS sites (is this necessary? would they agree to
it?). we would not submit to having to go to Celera for access, any more than they have to come to us
to get our data.
The product should be available not only on a dvd, but on the web in a searchable form. The dvd would
be available for those who wanted all the data, but should we make the web version` downloadable too?
presumably better since it would _be more easily updated and more widely available. (as an aside I
could image software companies selling tools to deal with the data in an on—demand way, rather than -
storing precalculated versions, pulling in data from various sources -·- that way they w0uldn‘t be
reproducing or redistributing the data). ` _ V _ .
’ That sane assurances should be sought that Craig's excesses should be reigned in, but how this could ,
be done other than by assurances from PE ·isn‘t clear. Craig will be a jerk in any case. _. -
I continued to express reservations and unease about all this, but didn't have a very effective - ,
~ _ counter. The alternative to not making an agreement is that we continue under Craig': withering pr Q
` assault for the next year, get sane snall acknowledgement fran Craig that we supplied him with ‘ ‘ ‘· _
. critical data andtxy to convince people that they will not get much more f1:¤m`Ce1era` than they can .
from the public domain. I did get some response to the- idea that we package our sequenceyith a`
_ _ constraint about not publishing it without our consent or acknowledgement. ` We will hopefully be
producing shotgun fast enoughby next summer that any dvd style distribution will be out of date ‘ .
` before it is widely available and thus of lesser value. (But for subscribers a more up to date
version would be made available over the web?) l` ·
· Just sane further_randou1·tl1oughts. If the timing is really as Eric outlined, the dvd in , ’
nature/science would be several months ·old. By the time it came out we would have completed the full ·
shotgun of all our clones, and if we are allowed to use the Celera data to plan experiments our data I
set will be essentially conplete by Dec. Local finishing is all that will be left and we could use ° __
the merged data set to decide howto go after each gap. " ' _ · _
~ At the end of the call I was pushed as to whether any agreement would satisfy me, and I had to say
that I was more optimistic about it than when the call had started. I di¢tn’t, feel stonewalling would
· be effective and the call bad moved me some. Anyway we lair, that we would work at putting on paper __ ·
- · what we thought we necessities for an agreement. I am to get cczmeuts back to Eric on his earlier j
Printed for Bob Waterstcn - · 1
nw 0028:3

Case 3:00-cv-00705-C ·
FD Document 137-8 Fnled 03/11/2005 Page 2 of 2
‘ jcs@s:mgcr.ac.uk, 11/21/99 10:32 PM -0500, call _ _ · · ‘ _ 2 *_
. ' piece, but quite apart we are to start putting down some of the points I listed above. We are
conference again this Friday after go.i.ng'back and forth to see if there Ls common and if more ·' : ·
hastobeha¤nered.out.-Isa.i.dIwantedtota1kt¤youab0¤xt·a11thisanda11agreeditwas - · .
worthwhile. No one thought it could go forward without you and it was important to get your concerns _
on the table q¤j.<:k1y. I am not the agent trying to convince you of anything that was diiscussed let me
- assure you. _ · · ‘ ‘ ` g . . _
` S0 we should ta1.1:. Let mekuow how we can strengthen the case for not going ahead, or the · ,
_ conditions for opening discussions. what a situation! _ _ · ~ . E
Gottogettobmhsowillsignofffornow. IhBVEB9lIRhlt¤¤\f1'EElllCh0£th€Yj.D8lftEI'Ch¤t. I _ Aj
do have a dinner to attend tunorrow night, butthat doesn‘t start til 6:30. YT
A11·the best, g . D '_ ·
. ` Printed for Bob Watcrston _ . 2
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