ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, June 22, 1996 TAG: 9606240058
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: TALLAHASSEE, FLA.
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
NOW IT WANTS the state to ease up on the man involved in a patent dispute.
The University of South Florida has called for a former student lab worker to be released from prison as President Betty Castor scrambles to distance herself from a patent dispute without giving up the university's fight for the patents.
The governor's office demanded the USF report - released Friday by university system Chancellor Charles Reed - as part of its intervention in the Petr Taborsky case.
Last month, the Miami Herald reported on how Taborsky's dispute with USF over who invented and owns a new method of treating waste water had landed Taborsky in a maximum-security prison in North Florida and on the chain gang.
Earlier this month, Taborsky was transferred from the prison to a Tampa, Fla., work-release center, and the USF report could help get Taborsky, 34, out of prison entirely.
The tangled 71/2-year-old case began when USF called campus police to investigate charges that Taborsky had taken lab notebooks and refused to return them. The data in the notebooks were the basis for a new method of purifying waste water.
Taborsky says the method came from independent research he conducted while working in a USF lab.
Taborsky was convicted of theft in 1990 and got probation. In 1992, he started getting patents for the invention. USF and prosecutors accused him of violating a judge's order that he make no more use of the data.
A judge ordered him to sign over the first patent. Taborsky refused. Eventually, he went to prison for probation violation.
In 1990, Frank Borkowski, then president of USF, sent a hand-delivered letter to the judge, urging ``that Mr. Taborsky should be incarcerated for his crimes and directed to pay a substantial fine.''
USF now says otherwise. From the report released Friday: ``The current administration of USF takes no pleasure in Mr. Taborsky's imprisonment and would not object to his release from prison.''
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