Once upon a time, circa 1994-1997, there were two college
students (David Zotter & Jody Powlette) dabbling in the
design and programming of new web applications.....using their own resources
and own time and own ideas.... the two of them created the first
web-based, Do-It-Yourself, Wizard-based, Form & Survey Data Collection
Engine. It was eventually named LIQUIDCOOL FREEFORM after buying the
domain name LiquidCool.com ….
It was developed because most web hosting providers at
the time didn't allow CGI access or server side scripting. Therefore, the
creation of online forms was not only time consuming and taxing, but impossible
for most common end-users.
LIQUIDCOOL FREEFORM was used for the design, creation,
automation, and hosting of forms over a large network (i.e. the
Internet). It was the first automated form creation application to have a
simple to use and easy "DO IT YOURSELF" wizard-based WEB interface
that allowed an end-user to define, conduct, and receive form results. It
was one of the early web-based form creation tools and the very first to allow
the design or a form through a simple set of several STEPS in a WEB wizard-like
interface. Through the same interface the end-user could build a form, define
all pertinent parameters, and then target the HTML form to a specific audience
by linking from a personal website, graphic file, homepage link or other web
source. The survey URL could even be placed within an e-mail message and
sent to hundreds of people. The results could be automatically processed,
analyzed, and charted in real-time as internet users filled out the
forms.
One of the first uses of this form creation tool was in
the use of targeted Online HTML based surveys - within hours people linked
banner ads and homepages to surveys hosted at our website.
The entire application was set up as a web-based
application service provider for anyone to use for free.
David Zotter later went to work for NFO Research to
evolve the idea based on Freeform. He hired Jody Powlette as a part time
consultant (still in school at Miami University at the time). Jody
became a full time employee of NFO Research and has been working on the project
ever since.
It is important to note that a far more sophisticated
version was created by Matt Petteys and David Zotter while in the MIS / BSBA program at Bowling Green
State University. This newer Do-It-Yourself application included the
ability to assign incoming respondents to a pool of dynamically changing surveys.
It was demoed in classes run by both Simha Magal and Bruce Klopfenstein.
More specifically, this improved version of FreeForm worked by matching
incoming respondents to dozens of changing surveys. This survey routing
was based on answers to screener questions related to demographics and courses
completed at BGSU. This intelligent matching accelerated the filling out
of surveys to meet various quotas. This version of the application was
used for rating and ranking professors performance by the student body at BGSU.
Matt Petteys and David Zotter later went to work for
Greenfield Online where these ideas served as the basis of Quicktake.com’s
survey router technology.
Liquid Cool FreeForm evolved into AnswerMon, which in
turn evolved into InsightXpress, which itself became the flagship product of a
company called InsightExpress.
Separately, FreeForm evolved into the Quicktake survey router
technologies at Greenfield Online.
Unfortunately over the years, many have claimed to be the inventors of such
ideas, processes, and methods without citing the works of LIQUIDCOOL
FREEFORM. Certain present-day survey applications are derived from
Freeform and later David Zotter’s work as an employee, though the patentees
failed to mention this in their applications.
The below screenshots are from the FreeForm application
circa August 1997 as it was pitched to NFO Research. You can also see copies of these on
Archive.org:
http://web.archive.org/web/19980530022610/www.liquidcool.com/freeform/index.html
http://web.archive.org/web/19980530022905/www.liquidcool.com/freeform/newform_intro.html
http://web.archive.org/web/19980530023215/http://www.liquidcool.com/freeform/stepbystep.html
http://web.archive.org/web/19990221053406/http://www.liquidcool.com/index.html
(listing other projects from Matt Petteys, David Zotter, & Jody Powlette)
NOTE: The forms created as NFOR
and NFORTest2 (those are from employees of the old NFO Research in Northwood,
Ohio)
-------
Here is the actual e-mail where David Zotter pitched the
idea to NFO Research…. while he was
then working as an intern at Marathon Oil.
Andy Pach and Dave Anderson were in
charge of online research technology at NFO Research.
The idea was circulated to Charlie Hamlin
and others in NFO’s senior management.
-----Original Message-----
From: Edward Zotter [mailto:DZotter@MarathonOil.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 1997 2:05 PM
To: aspach@nfor.com; dhanderson@nfor.com
Subject: FREEFORM.beta1
Hello Andy and Dave,
This is my latest and greatest
Internet survey toy. It's named
"FREEFORM". It's a wizard-based interactive survey engine.
http://www.liquidcool.com/freeform/
Give it a whirl, I think you'll
be very interested in some of the
features we have incorporated.
You can create an entire survey
in under 5 minutes and link it from an
external site quickly. It's so simple that even Bill Lipner could use
it.
We haven't added a couple of the
key features that your "DUO" project
has, however, some of the things on our site are superior. Eventually,
sometime next week we will have added the single question and automatic
(predefined) answers.
This is mostly just a javascript,
PERL, mSQL, SSL, Internet Explorer 4.0
experiment. The entire survey engine runs on a virtual $25/month server.
It's strictly for fun, however,
it is for sale or lease should the need
arise. :)
If you guys come up with any more
Internet projects to work on (other
than pulling Ethernet cable, prepping computers, cleaning the computer
room, following Rick around, etc.) I'd be more than interested.
Talk to you later,
David Zotter
------
Here’s a letter that David Zotter’s lawyer sent to
counsel for NFO in 1999, explaining much of the history:
TO: Jay Cohen,
Esq.
Paul,
Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison
1285 Avenue
of the Americas
New York,
NY 10019
Tel:
212-373-3163
Fax:
212-373-2274
Re:
E. David Zotter / NFO
Dear Mr.
Cohen:
I am
traveling in Asia this week, but wanted to respond to your fax of March 23
regarding E. David Zotter reasonably promptly.
We
appreciate your assurance that Mr. Zotter will be paid the wages owed him
without further delay.
As to Mr.
Zotter's obligations with respect to insightXpress, it appears that there is
some misunderstanding both of my earlier letter and of the facts; we offer the
following, which I hope will be helpful to you:
Your letter
suggests that we have asserted that Mr. Zotter believes that he has rights with
respect to insightXpress. This is not the case: Mr. Zotter has rights
with respect to certain work he did prior to coming to work full time for NFO,
some of which was later retooled at NFO to become part of insightXpress.
More
specifically, in the summer of 1997, while he was at Bowling Green State
University, Mr. Zotter and his friend, Jody Powlette, developed a web-based
survey creation tool, which they called "FREEFORM". It created
survey forms online. The surveys could be reached by links from web
pages, email, banner ads, and so forth. This was unconnected with any
employment relationship. It was made available on Mr. Powlette's website,
http://www.liquidcool.com, and was used by thousands of people. Although
Mr. Zotter had previously interned with NFO Research, Inc., this was unrelated
to any of the work he had done during the internship, which had consisted of
modifying HTML code, setting up bulletin board systems, and similarly mundane
activities. FREEFORM was created without reference to any NFO
information, confidential or otherwise, and without the use of any NFO
equipment.
Mr. Zotter demonstrated
and explained FREEFORM in detail during his job interview with Charlie Hamlin
of NFO in December of 1997 (or possibly early January 1998); Mr. Hamlin had
flown to Ohio, as we understand it, for the specific purpose of interviewing
Mr. Zotter and seeing FREEFORM. It was this interview that resulted in
Mr. Zotter's being invited to join NFO full time; he started in January of
1998. Neither Mr. Hamlin nor anyone else at NFO suggested at that time,
nor since, that FREEFORM belongs to NFO, or was somehow derived from NFO
information. In fact, it has always been Mr. Zotter's impression that he
was hired on the strength of FREEFORM, and NFO's interest in further developing
the concept. As it turned out, NFO eventually asked Mr. Zotter to move to
Connecticut, where he was put to work creating a similar system, which became
AnswerMon, and, later, insightXpress.
Subsequently,
NFO asked Mr. Zotter to assist in hiring Mr. Powlette, because Mr. Powlette,
too, had worked on FREEFORM, the underlying survey product. Ultimately,
Mr. Powlette ported the product from Perl to Active Server Pages, for
NFO. The end result is a product that in many ways resembles
FREEFORM.
The
principal differences between FREEFORM and insightXpress are that (1) instead
of reporting via Excel, as insightXpress does, FREEFORM's automated reporting
is in real-time online; (2) FREEFORM, as its name suggests, was provided
free-of-charge; and (3) FREEFORM did not link to targeted banner ads, as
insightXpress does.
Mr. Zotter
would agree that all rights in insightXpress reside in NFO, even to the extent
that insightXpress is a derivative work based on FREEFORM; however, Mr. Zotter
retains rights in FREEFORM, which was developed independently of insightXpress,
was developed prior to Mr. Zotter's being exposed to any aspect of
insightXpress, and has never been assigned to NFO.
We fully
appreciate your client's concern with respect to possible disclosure and use by
Mr. Zotter of anything resembling the product owned by NFO, and understand that
this concern is the principal motivation for the various warning letters being
circulated to Mr. Zotter and to Greenfield Online, and for NFO's obvious
hostility to Mr. Zotter since his departure.
We
reiterate that Mr. Zotter understands his obligations with respect to NFO
confidential information, and fully intends to abide by them. As a matter
of courtesy, to enable us to resolve this matter in a businesslike fashion, and
despite the poor treatment Mr. Zotter has received from NFO since his
departure, we assure you that, until such time as this issue is either resolved
or reaches an impasse, Mr. Zotter will refrain from disclosing or exploiting
FREEFORM to third parties (including GFO), and will treat FREEFORM as if it
were NFO confidential information, even though we firmly believe that NFO has
no legitimate claim whatsoever with respect to FREEFORM.