Ask Slashdot: How To Own the Rights To Software Developed At Work? 353
New submitter ToneyTime writes: I'm a young developer building custom add-ins for my company's chosen SAAS platform as a full time staff member. The platform supports a developer community to share code and plug-ins with an option to sell the code. While I don't plan on having a breakthrough app, I am interested in sharing the solutions I create, hopefully with the potential of selling. All solutions are created and made by me for business needs, and I aim to keep any company's specific data out. I have a good relationship with management and can develop on my own personal instance of the platform, but would be doing so on company time. Going contractor is a bit premature for me at this stage. Any advice, references or stories to learn from?
Contract (Score:5, Informative)
Get a signed contract, written by a lawyer. Don't expect anything else to hold up in court.
Re:Contract: No! (Score:5, Informative)
Resign and start consulting NOW!
Re:Contract: No! (Score:5, Funny)
While you still know everything!
Re:Contract: No! (Score:5, Insightful)
Every consulting contract I've signed has an IP assignment clause. So, even if you do consult, make sure you negotiate your terms wisely.
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In the absence of a contract the consultant will own the code. All paying for it give you is an implied license, which only includes source code if it is necessary for the normal use of the program (so basically scripting languages or programs where you hard coded enough that you need source code to use it.)
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In the absence of a contract the consultant will own the code. All paying for it give you is an implied license, which only includes source code if it is necessary for the normal use of the program (so basically scripting languages or programs where you hard coded enough that you need source code to use it.)
Nonsense. Any code developed as part of your work on behalf of a client is owned by default by your client in the absence of any other written agreement. It is known as work-for-hire. If the code is generic and not part of their products you can often get permission to distribute the code and retain ownership but it is not guaranteed.
Re:Contract: No! (Score:5, Informative)
Consultants do not fall under work for hire.
If you have one client and they choose your schedule you are not a consultant.
Re:Contract: No! (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't vague at all, cerberusti is exactly correct and the AC is a maroon.
"Work for hire" means employee. It doesn't matter what you want it to mean; look up the legal precedents. Contractors are exactly what is _not_ "work for hire," it is business to business contracted work. Basically, the opposite of "work for hire."
There is no ambiguity; you have to have an express assignment of copyright for it to transfer. The contractor owns all their own IP. What the client gets is an implied unrestricted license. That gives them certain rights; you can't stop them from using what you made, because they paid you to make it, but that isn't the same as granting copyright. And a copyright assignment that is buried in the contract is actually not enforceable. You have to have a separate document that is only the copyright transfer. You have to have a signature that is just for the copyright, or else it is not expressly agreed to, it is just an unenforceable extra condition. The copyright assignment can require another document to have been signed in order to take effect, though. So that is how it is done, and that is why there is more than one thing to sign when you have a lawyer do this stuff for you.
The funny part, yeah, consulting contracts often do claim to state the ownership, but that isn't a valid place for it, and the contractor actually still owns that code. It doesn't come up very often, though, because if you try to use that to screw somebody over, you'll be engaging in an unfair business practice and that will preclude you from bringing an otherwise-valid lawsuit regarding the matter.
The easy way to remember it if you don't want to learn the details, the copyright designation is based on who the legal employer is, not who paid for the work. Paying for the work just means you have to be allowed to use the thing that was made for you. If you want to also own the copyright, you're buying that separately the same as if it was made for somebody else.
Just wiki "work for hire" before trying to get pedantic and "stepping in it."
But in the article, as an employee there is no way for him to end up with copyright. Even if it was done at home, since it is clearly related to his work, they own it.
My advice for him, if you're not ready to be a contractor, and you're not ready to start your own company, just write these ideas down in a notebook. You're not in the right situation to be writing speculative for-profit apps that take advantage of your employer's platform, because you're also writing those for your employer. If your company actually wants you to do this, they'll give you the documentation you need, but make sure you're really well trusted by management. If you're just a regular Jr developer, don't even ask. Just write your ideas down so that you can think about them more later, and learn about which still look good later.
Re:Contract: No! (Score:5, Interesting)
You are conflating two different yet semantically related things.
"Work For Hire" and "Works For Hire" (sometimes referred to as "Works Made For Hire".)
Work For Hire refers to the actual work done by an employee/contractor that has been designated as falling upon the IP rules of Works Made For Hire.
Works Made For Hire is part of the the IP doctrine of copyright law.
If you are a contractor, and you do not have the money nor legal team to fight off an IP assignation case, you must carefully and clearly stipulate who owns what IP REGARDLESS OF WORKS MADE FOR HIRE. It IS ambiguous, and a contract lawyer will tell you - do not leave it up to interpretation outside of your contract..
I had a contract just two years ago that ran into an issue where the client (and their a**hole lawyer) were getting confused because I was going to provide them a solution that was built off of some code of mine that I owned all of the IP for.
I clearly delineated that they would own the solution, but that they were only receiving a license to use my previous inventions (and here's the part they choked on for a while) and any necessary extensions to my product that were necessary in order to provide them with a solution.
Their lawyer spent weeks arguing that they needed to own the changes I made to my existing product. That didn't happen...
So, as anybody who has dealt with an unfriendly lawyer would tell you - don't ASSume anything. Don't assume they won't be jerks, that they're not idiots, that the court isn't stupid, that jurors aren't stupid, et cetera ad nausem. Make it clear in your contract, as in 'clear to a 4 year old', who owns what, when, and for how long.
Re:Contract: No! (Score:5, Insightful)
I linked the actual rules in a reply to my post.
The way I dealt with this as a consultant was to incorporate my consulting company. That pretty much shuts down any argument over work for hire before it begins. I still occasionally had someone contest it and lawyer up, but they always backed down pretty quickly as there was zero chance of them winning a suit.
I suppose you could try to do it contract by contract, but not only is that annoying for small contracts, it is also still open to debate as transferring copyright is not as simple as having a line in your contract.
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Incorporation provides no shield whatsoever, at least in the US. They can still sue you into bankruptcy.
What you want is to spell out in the contract that anything you provide is an "instrument of service" and that it cannot be distributed, modified, blah, blah, without your permission.
And yes, you need a contract for each and every single job you do, no matter how small. There's always the chance that you will have an insane client (like I did) who ran up nearly a million dollars in costs arguing with us
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What a strange point of view you have. Incorporating does a few things for you:
1) It prevents you from being personally liable if you get sued (although there are some additional limitations on this if you are a sole proprietor which do not affect corporations with multiple owners, and if you do something illegal they may be able to pierce the veil and go after your personal assets anyway.)
2) If someone tries to claim work for hire, the judge will dismiss the case immediately (it never applies between two
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Yes, any contractor who has any idea of what is at stake should incorpate as a Chapter S at least.
Ignoring the huge tax advantages that comes with a Chapter S, it is the most protection for the least amount of effort.
If you're doing it full time, or you make at least $20k/year in income from your contracting, it's crazy to do anything else - it more than pays for itself. That $500 tax prep bill is worth every penny I saved by claiming capital gains on distributions.
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This is correct. Anyone claiming that you can work for a company - paid by the hour - and own ANY rights to the product of your work is full of BS. Sure, if you can negotiate a contract that says so, the do it. But absent that written agreement all work is for-hire, and there is AMPLE common law that follows that principle.
Re:Contract: No! (Score:5, Informative)
You can claim the law is BS all you want, but it would be inadvisable to take that position in court.
If it is an employee paid on a W2 who shows up at the office every day and has their tasks and schedule set by the employer, the employer owns the copyright.
If it is a contractor paid on a 1099 who uses their own equipment at their own location, the contractor owns the copyright (even if there is a clause in their contract stating otherwise.)
If it is somewhere in between a court would decide if they are an employee or an independent contractor.
http://copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf
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The author is the copyright holder unless it was an employee (which in the vast majority of cases comes down to if they are paid on a W-2 or not.) Under very limited circumstances which are explicitly enumerated in law, rarely apply to programmers, and which require written acknowledgement, it can sometimes apply to contractors.
Usually even if there is a contract stating that the commissioner owns it they do not, and the contractor is still the copyright holder. You must specifically transfer the copyrigh
Re:Contract: No! (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, as there are a couple of people contesting this already I though I would link the actual rules on copyright and work for hire.
http://copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf
Note that falling under (b) requires that it pass that test AND there be a contract stating so. The tests in (b) have also been found to be exhaustive, so it MUST fall under one of those scenarios.
This means that even in many cases where there is a contract stating that the party paying for the consulting time owns it, in reality the consultant still owns the code. The only common one where code is not owned by the consultant is when the work will become part of another existing work.
Re:Contract: No! (Score:4, Funny)
cumputers
don't forget the moanitors!
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You can believe that all you want, but unless an employee wrote the code or you have a correct copyright assignment you would almost certainly lose in court.
A correct copyright assignment is not as simple as having a clause in the contract specifying who owns the code, even many lawyers do it incorrectly.
Fired! (Score:5, Insightful)
You should be fired.
The company is paying you a salary, benefits, possibly sending you to training classes, etc. Everything you do on their premises belongs to them. Period.
If you are preoccupied with trying to figure a way to profit from THEIR software (that you write on THEIR dime), then they aren't getting what they are paying for.
Quit and start your own business.
In fact, that is great advice regardless. Take the chance now before you knock up some unfortunate woman and are saddled with a mortgage and child rearing expenses. You can live with your parents, friends, or your car if necessary, your family can't.
Re:Fired! (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish I had mod points to give you more boost.
first thing I said was "holy shit"
then I was after reading, No way....
I can not believe what I read, but your advice is solid,
go independent and consult and try to keep the
IP rights.
as a past employer, I never let any consultant keep
the IP rights. but I bet their are suckers
Just look what happened to Hoboken NJ when they did not
renew the software license for the automated parking garage
it stopped working http://www.govtech.com/magazin... [govtech.com]
funniest thing ever
Re:Fired! (Score:5, Interesting)
as a past employer, I never let any consultant keep
the IP rights. but I bet their are suckers
They (and you) probably just don't realize they own it all, so it will never come up. ;) Unless you had a separate assignment document, and you actually paid them extra for the copyright, they still have it.
The most common mistake is trying to include the assignment in the main contract. Not valid. The next one, and this gets almost everybody, is that without some consideration (money) given in exchange for the assignment, it isn't a valid contract. If all the money that changes hands is based on the work, then there is consideration for the part that gives you an implicit license, but no consideration for the copyright.
A lot of people just assume that because they handed a lawyer money and signed paperwork, that everything is legal and enforceable. But lawyers are often not as good as that. And, with something like this just having the lawyer keep explaining it all to the client long enough for the client to understand it would triple the cost. In order to be competitive, they don't drag you through the whole process; just the parts they think you'll need. The contractor isn't likely to mess with you over this because for various reasons, so they don't dot the i's or cross the t's.
Re:Fired! (Score:5, Insightful)
You want to make something you own? Use all the knowledge you have from your job (you own knowledge unless they contract otherwise), work AFTER HOURS, and replicate the functionality.
If you become successful using work, or work secrets, you WILL BE SUED. Until you're successful, they won't notice you--so you'll think you got away free. The lawsuits come when people have money to get.
The guys that made the MOS Technology 6502 didn't steal from Motorola in the crazy sense the OP is suggesting. The only thing any of them did was quit Motorola to start their business, and one engineer took some documents he wasn't supposed to. Motorola sued the balls of them under terms much "nicer" than the OP suggests doing, and their lawsuit was said to have a "plausible chance of winning." Their investor left. They were running out of money (regardless of whether or not they were right), and had to settle--likely under terms that were worse than if they were financially stable enough to continue fighting.
Re:Fired! (Score:4, Interesting)
If he was a hourly laborer, doing the work after hours would be enough, but for professional work that just doesn't help. It would have to be both after hours, and also unrelated to his work. He can write linux device drivers or something, but replicating the stuff at work... they own that too.
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Everything you do on their premises belongs to them. Period.
And when you're a professional such as a software developer of some sort, they also own what you do off of their premises if it is related to your job. As, for example, if you were creating your own apps for their proprietary framework. This would be true even if you worked on some other part of the framework, but where it is plugins and you write plugins at work, it is an easy analysis.
If you want to own code you write away from work, it has to be completely 100% unrelated to the job. 100%
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Re:Fired! (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, my first reaction to reading this was, "TRANSLATION: How do I get away with selling something my employer's already paid me for?"
Re:Contract (Score:5, Interesting)
This guy just needs to buy his work back from his employer.
Despite what appearances may suggest, his employer is not his friend. His employer is there to profit from his work. So he just needs to make his employer a financial offer they're likely to accept, and then see what happens. Everything potentially has a price. Everything is negotiable.
Re:Contract (Score:5, Interesting)
Get a signed contract, written by a lawyer. Don't expect anything else to hold up in court.
While partly true, many States have extensive law about how these things work, and without a contract you're automatically using that default system. Depending on your State, those default rules may leave you better positioned than any of the contracts a company's lawyers might agree to. In States with good protections on both sides, it can actually be the most protective situation for the developer!
And if you're in one of these States, don't expect that signed contract to stand up in court; much of it might be superseded by the law. In my State for example, a typical 5 page employment contract probably only has 1 or 2 paragraphs that are enforceable and the rest is gobblygook that is included because the lawyer uses the same contract regardless of State.
Get it in writing (Score:2)
Most business owners may have issue with you claiming IP for things built on company time. Even if you build something in your off hours, it may be difficult to prove you didn't use company resources.
Make sure that if you have an agreement with your employer that you have something signed by a senior executive or the owner.
Re:Get it in writing (Score:5, Insightful)
Since you're doing this on the company's nickel, it's known as "work for hire." You have no ownership rights. Also, since you're developing this using their resources on their time, why would you expect to be able to resell it when it's clearly their property? That would be like being hired to make donuts, making a batch with your boss's ingredients and tools while being paid, and expecting to keep the profit.
This might qualify as one of the 10 dumbest "Ask Slashdot" questions going. If it's a troll, it's working.
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How's it different from a contractor, working for the same company, and using the same resources ?
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that company owns the software they paid you to write unless there is contractual language saying otherwise.
It's fairly common for a contractor to have exactly such a contract, otherwise you're making things really hard for yourself when you get hired for a different job, and you need the same piece of code to solve a problem.
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I was asking what the difference was. How come one of them is considered "the dumbest question ever", and the other one is standard, even though there's quite a bit in common ?
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Unless otherwise arranged. Your post is not insightful - people can make other arrangements. He's asking questions about that.
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No, it is not.
What about this situation: You're a construction worker and at some point during your workday, you find a smurf and attach it to the hammer you were using to do some hammering. The smurfhammer proves to work ten times better than the smurfless hammer -- a great invention!
According to your reasoning, the company the construction worker works for now owns the smurfhammer (2000). What's worse, all employees are discouraged from ever thinking up and using smurf-augmented tools on the job. If they
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Not to mention that having a good relationship with management won't guarantee anything.
Even if you never have a falling out, don't forget that it's a business. As such the chain of command is vulnerable to higher ups promoting or reassigning your boss.
And of course there's also mergers, acquisitions, bankruptcies, and other such corporate reorganizations that could well change who you report to.
Not only should you get it in writing, but make sure that the person signing the contract is sufficiently empowe
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Money for nothing, chicks for free.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me get this right, you want to be paid by your employer for your work, but still own everything you produce. You are putting nothing into this other than the time you are spending to produce the code, and that time is being paid for by somebody else.
So where is your skin in this game?. Sounds like you want somebody else to finance your enrichment.
Re:Money for nothing, chicks for free.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Sounds to me like OP is asking to get fired or blacklisted as soon as management gets wind of the plans. I wouldn't even broach the subject with them. The downsides far outweigh any benefits and if nothing else it's highly unethical.
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Its got to be a millenial..
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Its got to be a millenial..
Or the kid of a 1%er.
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Given that he wrote "my companies" in TFA it could be either.
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Or Bill Gates' kid. Considering Gates and Allen used time on a PDP-10 at Harvard which was financed by DARPA to compile and work on their earliest stuff like MS BASIC.
A lot of success stories know how to use other people's resources to make it big. This person is just trying to figure out how to do the same thing.
I am not really concerned personally about him doing that. If his company lets him get away with it, that's up to them. I am not incredibly interested in pointing out that the company is techni
Re:Money for nothing, chicks for free.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I would not fire him over asking... I probably would negotiate a lower salary if he wants to own his code, and I would say no if it was a core part of the business (he says they are add-ins, so maybe.)
If it is not a software company they may have no intention of selling it, and may see it as a good thing to be able to cut their costs by more than half and still get the benefits.
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You are putting nothing into this other than the time you are spending to produce the code, and that time is being paid for by somebody else.
He is presumably putting the special efforts of his own brain and creativity into it; which is not merely hours of manual labor.
And presumably the work he is creating is useful to the employer, so they should be satisfied to be able to use the work he is creating.
Some companies might be willing to negotiate rights ownership of the product to the developer, in e
Re:Money for nothing, chicks for free.... (Score:5, Insightful)
"He is presumably putting the special efforts of his own brain and creativity into it; which is not merely hours of manual labor"
When you hire a programmer, designer, or engineer, they are expected to have a brain, make special effort and be creative (inovative) in thier solutions. Its kinda part of the job description, and if you are paying them for thier work all of the above is pretty much a given.
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When you hire a programmer, designer, or engineer, they are expected to have a brain, make special effort and be creative (inovative) in thier solutions.
Nonsense. The ordinary ability of an average programmer is what is part of the job description, not the "special talents" of peculiarly good programmers, i.e. those in the top 70%.
As evidenced..... the latter are generally paid no more than the former, the extra creativity and talent of spectacular programmers does not factor into the work arrangem
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There is no evidence the OP is any more than an average programmer. Regardless you cant be a programmer without problem solving skills, and while i agree that skills are variable, that just means that they are more or less able to meet the requirements of the job.
Software engineering requires skilled people. And the job requirment is given to require abilities and skills beyond what for example a store checkout operator would require to meet the requirments of thier job description. Thats also why a develop
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That you want a 71%-er to be some sort of special snowflake says a lot about you, probably more than you intend. You might have actually said that a 31%-er is peculiarly good, it isn't clear, but I'll just assume you meant 71% is peculiarly good.
Whatever skill or ability they have is what they are being paid for as a professional. Manual labor, of course, is not being paid for unless part of the job description.
Even if they're a 99.99999%-er, they're no more peculiarly good that they were hired to be. That
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I work as a contractor. People pay me to develop things, but I keep the copyright. They get a license to use it.
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Except your situation is different. In this case this kid is an employee
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He is not a contractor, he is an employee......
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I know. Just pointing out that you can be paid for your time, and still keep ownership of the code. In theory, an employee could negotiate a contract that allows him the same.
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And how exactly do they calculate how much someone gets paid for their work? That's right, most of it based on the standards of living in the city, the remaining based on education and skill. IOW, the programmer gets paid the same regardless of quality of code, quantity of code or impact of code to the bottom line of the company. You agree that the code produced by a p
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"and that time is being paid for by somebody else".
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For the tasks that he has been directed to do --- yes.
After all that is what he is employed to do, use his brain to provide solutions, if there are no neurons firing there then the company would be better cutting him loose and employing somebody else with more active cranial contents.
For gods sake, he is hired to be a programmer/developer, he is supposed to be creative. If human creativity was not required to solve these problems then there would be an application sitting in his seat instead of him.
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Well... yes?
When I get hired to work for someone, and he pays me for the time I spend there (i.e. on a hourly rate, not, say, a fixed amount per project), I think he is entitled to me using that time he pays for for nothing but working for him. Basic human necessities aside (I'd look oddly at you if you asked me to clock out to take a leak, though I know that there are some bozos who think that's sensible. I don't. I prefer a worker who can concentrate instead of thinking "must control bladder, lest I lose
Very simple... just ask (Score:4, Interesting)
Ask your boss. You no doubt signed away the copyright to the code you write for work, so you'll likely need explicit permission from them. If whatever you're doing isn't something that interests them from a business perspective, they might just let you do it.
My previous and current employers have allowed me to Open Source the generic non-business-critical software I write. Beyond just making me happy, one of the reasons I gave them is that any improvements I develop outside of work will be able to flow back in -- it was a win-win.
Short Answer: DON'T (Score:3)
I'll bet if you read your employment contract carefully, you'll discover that any intellectual property you create while on the clock automatically belongs to your employer. Some places claim ownership over your private projects done off the clock, although I fail to see how that would hold up in court.
So yea, the smart money is on not doing personal projects on company time.
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So yea, the smart money is on not doing personal projects on company time.
The smarter money is on doing company projects on company time!
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Why not code at home? (Score:2)
Talk to the legal team & managers (Score:3, Insightful)
This is very easy. By default, anything you create - or even imagine - during business hours or in execution of your duties is 100% owned by the company. In fact, if you produce something at home and you can't show clean room separation between systems and code between your personal code and your work code, you're not likely going to keep the rights to that either.
You know that part of the employment process where they ask you to list all your prior works? This is them giving you a chance to CYA. Granted, the legalese on that page usually states that you're allowing them to use it for free in perpetuity if you include it in any of your work at the company, but that makes perfect sense Think utility libraries you carry around with you from job to job. They don't want to own them, but they can't risk having their products 'poisoned' by arbitrary licensing.
In fact, there's even a case where a guy had an idea, spoke to a co-worker about it, discussed it with his immediate superior and they decided not to follow up on it. After he quit the company, he started work on it himself, and was getting ready to finish/sell it, when he was sued by his prior employer. Because it had been 'developed' (thought of, even if it was never written down) on company time, the judge sided with the company and full ownership was given to them. He had to finish the program and deliver it and the mechanisms required to build and distribute it to them, without malicious sabotage Forced to write code for free, for a product the company didn't even want.
So! The only way this is really going to work for you is if you speak to your legal team and management.
I have, in the past, approached my manager(s) and asked permission to work on side jobs which were clearly and 100% outside of the scope of my current job; working on banking applications while I was writing automobile inventorying software, and was given permission. Got a signed statement, and I was good. Did open source work on the side as well, for a game engine, again, no problems.
However, it's extremely unlikely that anything you do at work will be allowed to be owned by you. No company likes giving away potential revenue and adding competitors with insider knowledge. I mean, really unlikely. Like, I can't even comprehend how you think it's a real possibility. Getting the company to go along with an open source thing might be one possibility, but an employee getting ownership?
Think of it this way: You work as a mechanic in a garage. You have access to all the tools and equipment there. You decide that you'll start your own business, in that garage, fixing cars, but you'll keep all the money instead of giving it to your employer, while still using his equipment and space. You still expect him to pay you for the hours you're working there.
Can you really see this happening? If so, you may need to lay off the cough syrup, cause we're all worried about you.
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He had to finish the program and deliver it and the mechanisms required to build and distribute it to them.
Somebody might own copyright on your ideas or core, but copyright ownership doesn't force anybody to produce content, or "writing it down".
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I read about this in a business journal article on IP law. I have searched many times for this on the net, and I could not find it. The relevant details were:
The employee worked for a utility or utility hardware company, either power or phones. The case was brought somewhere in the 98-2000 time frame, though that's just a rough guess. This specific case was cited in a different article relating to the Jacobsen v. Katzer case, regarding strange uses & abuses of IP law, but I can't find that article e
Own the company you Work at (Score:2)
It is tough though. (Score:2)
I don't know about you - but there are two parts to my job...thinking and doing.
The doing part is easy enough to segregate...If I'm sitting at my desk at work "doing"...typing in code, debugging, documenting, etc - then clearly that belongs to my employer and I have no right to be "doing" anything that I'm going to have control over outside of work.
But thinking is near impossible to segregate. I may well be thinking about solutions to my employer's problems as I commute, or as I'm fritzing around with some
You Don't (Score:3)
But get this through your head: AS AN EMPLOYEE EVERYTHING YOU PRODUCE IS OWNED BY YOUR EMPLOYER -- THAT IS WHY THEY ARE PAYING YOU -- THEY DO NOT PAY YOU BECAUSE THEY LIKE YOU -- THEY PAY YOU FOR OUTPUT
Got it? If so, please share with the rest of the entitled butt-hurt millennials who think they got a job solely because they "deserve it".
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THEY DO NOT PAY YOU BECAUSE THEY LIKE YOU -- THEY PAY YOU FOR OUTPUT
The output could be working code plus a license to use it. It doesn't require the company to have the copyright.
Don't tell anyone. (Score:2)
'Good relations' with management go quickly downhill once you reel in the money and they don't get a major cut.
Don't tell anybody, do it on your own machine and sell anything under a nom de plume.
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'Good relations' with management go quickly downhill once you reel in the money and they don't get a major cut.
Don't tell anybody, do it on your own machine and sell anything under a nom de plume.
You forgot the last 2 steps.
2. Get caught for defrauding your employer.
3. Go to jail. Do not pas Go! Do not collect $200.00!
Oh, and then there's the civil suit.
Sigh....smart yet naive and ungrateful. (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm, yeah... forget it. (Score:2)
I own a software business. Anything written during working hours, for which the author is compensated by me, belongs to me. End of story.
Now, I did sign a contract with one of my employees who had his own open-source project from before he joined the company. it basically said that whatever he worked on on his own time was his, as long as it didn't compete with any of our products.
Re: (Score:2)
Have signed such a contract too. Think my employer was quite surprised that I spotted their IP clauses and was happy to do the same - they merely CLARIFY that anything not to do with the business or on business time is not their properly, to save legal hassle later on if it should become an issue.
But, as you can see from the wording there, the implication is that that was true already, but just not clear that it DID NOT apply to my own stuff.
Completely agree. When you're being paid, you don't get to take
Too many options - Try to negotiate. (Score:2)
There is a few options that came to my mind, but all of them requires that you sign an agreement with your boss/Company.
1) Ask for an agreement telling that both parties owns the right of the software and source code. Try to avoid any “Eternal” periods of time of confidentiality since you may not know what happens in more than 5 years. So if your boss asks you for confidentiality of the source code limit the time of it.
2) When you set an agreement about the ownership of the source code
Open source it (Score:2)
All this talk about where you work and contracts is irrelevant if the code is licensed to be freely shared and modified. Make sure your company understands the benefits of open source, then have them allow you to develop under said license. When you decide to incorporate under a different entity, you can resell the open source code using your private resources.
Re: (Score:2)
Open sourced code still (usually) has a copyright owner. The OP is asking to be assigned the copyright to work he produces as part of his job. At my job we open source as much as we can because it has many benefits to both us and the wider community - but we (the company) keep ownership of it.
I'd say he's smoking crack but maybe if he asks nicely his company will sign it over. If it were me I'd laugh him out of the room.
That's unethical (Score:3)
If they are paying you a salary and providing you with a salary, and possibly training, they should own it. After all, that is your job. You may want to ask them to patent it. Having your name on a patent s good for a resume.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you really telling someone it's unethical to haggle over some of the terms of their employment arrangements? You have strange ethics.
The haggling was already done when the company offered them a job and they accepted. Sure, they can try and ask for more later, but the company is under no obligation to do anything that wasn't specified at hiring time.
Re: (Score:3)
But here must be fairness. If the company puts up the funding, the poster should not expect to walk away with everything. Try that with an investor. See my other response.
Re: (Score:3)
The employee could trade in some of his salary.
You're fooling yourself ... (Score:4, Funny)
Well, Young Developer.
You're going to have to understand the term "work for hire" -- which basically means in most cases when you work for a company and do stuff for them, they own it, and not you.
You might be exceedingly lucky and find an employer who will sign off on that.
But for the most part, your employer doesn't give a fuck about what Young Developers want in terms of ownership of code.
Why would a corporation be paying you to develop stuff for them that you're going to turn around and sell to other people.
Only someone young and new to the industry would be so self entitled as to ask what you're demanding. Because the laws surrounding "work for hire" have been around for decades ... and they won't change just because you deem yourself special.
Most companies will tell you to piss off if you suggest that.
I've done this very thing... (Score:2)
I suppose some of this depends on how
Re: (Score:2)
Open Sourcing != reassigning ownership. The OP wants to _own_ the code and resell it later.
Work For Hire (Score:2)
Work For Hire is what you are doing.
Your company owns the copyright on your work, not you, by default.
Additionally if you *LOOK* at your employment contract you will find that *ALL* the work you do while *EMPLOYED* by your employer is *OWNED* by your employer *INCLUDING* the work you do at while *NOT AT WORK* if the work you are doing is *RELATED IN ANY WAY* to the business your employer is in or *MAY BE CONSIDERING TO ENGAGE IN*.
And that, my friends, *is* in the boilerplate employee contract for pretty muc
Why has it to be on Company Time? (Score:2)
Rereading the question, OP works at a company servicing a SAAS for developers to share code and being paid for it; so far so good. OP works on the backend software for this platform, very well as well.
He wants to sell his Code and Ideas, this is fair. But why has he have to do this in company time? In the question this reads as an imperative? Why can't he do it in his free time like everybody else, using the very same platform he has so much insight in?
Would the code he wants to sell be pertinent to the SAA
some followup questions to clarify... (Score:2)
Lots of other posts are kind of knee-jerk in their simplistic responses; they are not necessarily wrong, but they may be incomplete.
For what it is worth, I will give you a silver star for thinking about this before starting to "write your own code"... much better to game through some scenarios now instead of going heads-down for 6 months or a year and running in
Sigh... seriously? (Score:3)
... quit and work for yourself (and see how hard it is to pay for resources, benefits, insurance, lawyers, etc.), OR realize all the things being employed by a stable company offers you and be thankful.
And no, I don't mean just be happy being a worker bee, but it's a give and take relationship as an employee, and you only want to take.
Seriously, with that attitude, I'd never hire you as you sound like someone with no loyalty and nothing but "me me me" for a mindset.
Re:Advice : do it from home exclusively. (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't matter. As an employee of the company the work you do for the company belongs to the company unless you have a contract that says it belongs to you and not the company.
If you have such a contract, it doesn't matter where you do the work.
Most companies will try to get you to sign a contract that says any work you do that's even remotely related to the work you do for the company belongs to the company, even if nobody at the company asked you to do it.
For some people, freedom to own your work is way more valuable than pay. If that's you, you need to negotiate a different working relationship and probably employee is not what you want.
Re: (Score:3)
That depends on what state he lives in. Several states (e.g., Kansas [kslegislature.org], among others) have laws which state that work done on your own time with your own resources is yours, and any contract clauses which state otherwise are null and void.
As always, OP should consult a lawyer, as even if such a law exists in his state, there may be finer details which could still prevent him from developing his plug-ins.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think he is confusing anything. If you use company resources, that company can claim it was a work for hire and claim copyright ownership just like they do for the work they pay you to do whether they commissioned it or not.
Sure, you can fight it in court, possibly win, but while costing you crap tons of money while being unemployed at the same time. Oh you think you would still be employed after being fired for misusing or theft of company resources and actively in a court battle over who owns the