I realized an incredible flaw in the extraction runs, especially unwilling extractions. Corporations when they hire Runner teams to perform extractions do so because they want to steal talent. While it may be possible to get away with say stealing a prototype or plans and claiming that they developed the technology independent of the other corps it is pretty damn hard to deny the fact that a leading scientest was kidnapped and ended up working for their corporation. If they track down any missing talent and find them in another megacorps possession, well I'm pretty sure thats grounds for an Omega Order.

It's a matter of detente: I don't follow up on personnel that vanished from my roster and appeared in yours, and you reciprocate.

Corps are nothing if not pragmatic.

It really depends on what happens to the guy, as there's plenty of ways to make sure noone ever finds out what happened. Just off the top of my head some plausible scenarios are:
1. Kidnap the talent, put them to work in a closed high security facilty with his family under threat.
2. Put the talent through brain washing/indoctrination camp, give him plastic surgery, spoof some records in the corp's own personnel files. Instant clean corporate drone.
3. Take the stereotypical egotistical genius, as seen in the movies: "I do not care who I work for or what's done with it, just let me do my research to prove my superiority to all my rivals"

As for reasons not to persue an Omega Order, apart from the proof needed (which a brainwashed/threatened scientist will not give). There's also the nasty thing called legal precedent. Meaning that this would over time effectively wipe out all the corps, as they're all quite likely to try this sort of thing. In other words, it's part of the corporate game and you can be sure the entire corporate court is aware of that fact. Besides.. what would it do to the economy if AAA's knew the Omega Order was coming and took steps to take the rest with them?

and, actually, it's pretty easy to deny the fact that a leading scientist was kidnapped. if i got to issue an Omega Order every time someone kidnapped one of my scientists, then anytime a scientist of mine voluntarily left me for another megacorp, i'd certainly claim he'd been kidnapped. that means that anytime you kidnap a scientist, you can claim that he came over voluntarily and that the corp you kidnapped him from is just crying wolf. ah, lies, the world would be so boring without you!

Also the scientist or whoever never speaks for himself, the corp speaks for him. Thus you try proving it was unwilling. It's a case of one corp's word against another's without evidence.

If corp A has talent stolen by corp B and finds out, why bother with an Omega Order when suddenly corp A has the right to break into corp B and steal him and all sorts of other goodies back with no serious repurcussions?

Just blow up a data center. Remember, this is shadow run, where nobody ever makes off-site backups.

think about it, what would happen if a similar action was performed by any side in the cold war?

So you are saying there are runs to destroy the contracts for kidnapped personel? Unless they are keeping those contracts in Zurich orbital.

Extra territoriality makes problems I think. Imagine how awkward it would be today to get someone for contract violation if they're in another country from the original employer? Now imagine that country doesn't want to give them up?

Now this would only apply for the bigger corps, but given that their own laws rule on their own turf they are essentially a seperate country. I can imagine this being a legal nightmare.

well, i imagine most contracts in SR are stored in duplicate at multiple locations in multiple formats to prevent that. but altering a few copies could cast doubt on the legitimacy of the contract, which can help a court case.

Also, a surprising number of the world's top researchers and scientists have a nasty habit of dying in horrible accidents that leave no identifiable remains. The fact that another corp hired a guy with the exact same degrees from another instutution the very next day is completely coincidental. What do you mean 'It's the same guy!'? Professor Someguy's ID and credentials are iron-clad. They're all here in the computer for anybody to read.

Yeah, which is when a CC contract specialist shows up to ask detailed questions of many people. Coincidences don't tend to exist in their world.

And given how much R&D and science are collaborative efforts with researchers all over the world, exactly how would you expect soemone to actually do anything useful if you lock them in a room and tell them "do great things"? Or do you allow them to do interactive collaborations, live on-line meetings and show up at international conferences?

As I imagine it, there is a very blurry line between routine competition, and escalation that could lead to major disruptive conflict "(you realize, of course, that this means war"). If Corp A really wants researcher B, and makes an offer, and the legit methods fail, and then arranges an extraction... maybe it all blows over; maybe it's settled out of court, with threat of Corporate Court action; maybe most of the Court was already annoyed at Corp A anyways and is itching for a pretext to fine them (with all kinds of ways to punish noncompliance); then again, maybe Corp A happened to extract the researcher from Corp C, and most of the court is unhappy with Corp C, and thus will side with Corp A out of spite regardless of the facts. An Omega Order is a big hassle and could result in major losses all around... then again, it could be darn profitable for whoever gets to buy up the assets of the target of the Omega Order, at fire-sale prices.

In otherwords: sometimes you think you're playing for low stakes and it turns out you're playing for high stakes; and third parties can complicate things. Also: Shadowrun is unpredictable and dangerous, except when it's boring and routine, except for the times when it's routine AND dangerous.

Putting the extracted researcher into an isolated, secret lab seems like a good idea.
See also Project Paperclip en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_paperclip

A classic extraction scene from fiction happens in "Burning Chrome" by Gibson; see also New Rose Hotel www.lib.ru/GIBSON/hotel.txt

Remember that while each of the corporations actually functions as a command economy and a nation in and of themselves, publically each claims to be an individual actor in a truly free market. Which means that on the public side they have to claim to support free labor in addition to free trade.

Thus, coercive contracts and the virtual enslavement of scientists and wage earning button pressers is actually illegal. They "don't do it" and "wouldn't if they could because of their faith in the invisible even of the free market which rewards competition." So when Aztechnology loses a high value researcher to Ares, they can't go to the corporate court about it. Their "possession" of the scientist was a violation of CC law in the first place.

-Frank

Which means if you kidnap someone who is working for someone openly and freely they CAN come down on you like the proverbial ton of bricks. And hence they will.

Eurotroll has it on the head; it's the price of playing the game. I extract your man, you extract mine. We don't bring it up, and if we ever do have to address it, we either cover it up, call it voluntary, or claim we don't even have him.

It's a MAD world isn't it?

Old news. It's not as if we have a couple thousand years of historical examples of low level conflict resolution instead of big bad horrible Final Solution|War to End all Wars|The Big One|Omega Order.

..so let's throw out this case.

The person extracted is a minor (17) living in a "corporate village" of a midsized Tech Corp who's parents have mysteriously disappeared. Until they can be found, the Corporation becomes her legal guardian.

Now the kid is a designer baby genius who has received further gene treatments as well as some bio Augmentation over the years and is being carefully "groomed" by the Corporation for whatever purpose they may have. In addition (at the age of 15) she also received a prototype commlink implant. Given this, technically she could be considered a ward (property) of said Corporation. She has been assured by her corporate appointed caretaker that her the Corporation is doing everything they can to locate her parents

The girl of course doesn't buy that in the least.

Instead, she wants out because she believes she knows what is going on and maybe why her parents disappeared, but as of yet is not of legal age to take any legal recourse of he own. So, she gets on the matrix and finds a party interested in trading some important data she has (Namely the commlink's design that she backwards engineered though the diagnostic routines) in exchange for her extraction, a way out of town (Boston) and a new identity. The buyer goes for it, the deal goes down, and the gene-engineered kid genius ends up in the Seattle shadows.

While in hiding:

...she turns 18.

...the buyer releases the commlink design on the market several months later with just enough tweaks to skirt infringement laws.

...the Tech Corp which she was extracted from took a hit with the release of the commlink by its competitor and is forced to partner with one of the Megas

Does the Original Corp. or it's Parent Mega still have legal rights to get her back or are they SOL?

SOL shes 18.

...even though the original corp invested quite a bit in her development not just through specialised education and the implants she received, but in more so because of, her genetic "design"?

This is where the whole GeneTech issue muddies things up for her genetic structure could possibly be considered legal property (especially if patented) of the corporation even though she is a sentient being.

Do your parents "own" you because they created your genetic makeup entirely and invested a ton into you?

Also, what exactly defines one as "human"? Does the genetic engineering alter her enough that she no longer counts as a person? If not, then where does one draw the line where legal status changes? If a ghoul is not a human, shouldn't anyone that's had their genetic material modified stop being a person? But more to the point, I imagine that these questions are going to get answered a number of different ways in different places. UCAS law is going to be different from Ares corporate law, which will be different from Aztechnologies law, and there's a good chance that none of these laws are going to be worded very specifically, because it's likely to be an issue that's still being sorted out in 2070.

I would say that it's a moot point.

They probably could legally claim her, on some technicality or other, since their control of the legal system is far greater - they could say she was kidnapped and not currently in her right mind, say that they have the right to remove the augmentations that they gave her, claim that she committed this or that crime and needs to be extradited to face corporate justice, and so on (and once back in their clutches, a bit of brainwashing can change her mind quickly).

They are just as likely to simply kidnap her off the street, though. She will never be able to live a normal life out in the open. Her only two options are to remain in hiding or exile for the rest of her life, or to find a different corporate "master" which can protect her from the original corporation.

I think that no matter the genetic modifications, a person is still considered a person in 6th world law. The main theme seems to be if something is sentient or not. No matter how much someone's been gene-engineered, they're still metahuman and thus have the basic metahuman rights, or at least on paper.

Plus, any legal action to make her a 'property' would be bad for various reasons. firstly, the PR. Secondly, the fact that they'd have to prove how exactly she isn't (meta)-human. Putting all that lovely research data straight in the public domain for the competition to snap up and use.

Genetic and/or personal modification in itself is definately not a reason to take away someone's rights as a person, seeing how bioware and genetech are commercial products.

I'd only allow that in 3 scenarios: 1) the corp that got her out is a bunch of idiots; 2) the corp that got her out no longer functioned by the time she "slipped" into the shadows; 3) the corp that got her out wanted her in the shadows and are somehow controlling her without her knowledge. Either way, simply slipping into the shadows is far too easy and hurts my suspension of disbelief.

...Jaid wins the not so fabulous no-prize.

@Simon May, you are close on one of your points, can't say how much as I do not even know since that is in the GM's domain.

@Paradigm. Excellent points. Basically wanted to get some interpretations on how far Gentech and the law could go, especially when it comes to individual corporate/megacorporate law. My thinking was since there are patents/copyrights supposedly held on Chimeras, and Gene Art, why not on "Genebrats"?

I think of the Corporate Court to be in a state of perpetual Cold War. Just think of all the scientists and military officers that defected back and forth between Nazi Germany/Italy and the Allied nations before WWI and WWII and between the Soviet Union and the Western countries during the Cold War. If inventors of nuclear technology could defect without starting an all out war, then I doubt the defections of inventors of a new mouthwash would cause that kind of extreme response either. They would try to get him back sure, probably even assassinate him and his family if they couldn't but they wouldn't start an all out war over it.

...I have to agree. An all out corp war would be bad for business, especially in the case of an extraction. Now this is not to say, as Buster mentioned, some kind action of might not be taken, but it would only be done if it were cost effective and could be kept fairly quiet.

As Paradigm alluded to, the last thing any corp wants is bad press. Bad press affects public opinion. Bad public opinion in turn affects sales. Sales affects the sacred bottom line and the sacred bottom line affects the almighty shareholders

Actually in Hong Kong extractions are part of the etiquette. For example if you want person Y from Corp X, you can't have him since it would be a loss of face. However if someone tries to extract them, and fails because of your actions. You might be able to get him from the company as a way to save face, and a 'thank you' for stopping the extraction. Even if everyone involved knows the real score.

I think the OP misses something very big up front. Something like this only involves 2 corps. The only omega order ever involved one corp/nation conglomerate giving every single one of them the finger at once.

This strikes me very much as business as normal. And internal politics are such that a corp w/ shares in one corp might not mind if corp Z has Corp Y's gizmo and is selling it for a profit. Based on the fiction it seems that a little bit of corporate incest in ownership is present. Certain corps forming loose coalitions where their interests align and oppose as well.

Also, it may be far easier to kidnap someone close to the target to blackmail him into switching than to kidnap the target himself. Also w/ the availability of fake SINs (especially with a corp footing the bill), a rating 6 new SIN shouldn't be that hard to come up with to get around a non-compete claus in a contract.

Seeing as corps can issue their own SINs it wouldn't even have to be fake. Take a formerly Ares SIN-less person, give him a brand new legit Ares SIN. Nothing fake about it, they can do it for anyone they deem worth the money.

Chris