Consumption and Real Estate
Does an employee retain intellectual property of software made for their employer?
Question : Does an employee retain intellectual property of software made for their employer?
More directly, if you are employed by a company and write a program that is used by that company, does the company own it? Can the person that developed it copyright it? Would there need to be a clause in the employees contract that gave the company rights to the software? Is it possible that if a company employed a person that wrote software that was critical to the operation of the company, that the person could use the software against the company if any “bad” situation was to occur? Especially if the company had never thought to protect themselves from such an incident.
property software
Best answer:
Answer by lucee
You are really beating about the bush on this one, aren’t you?!? Under most circumstances, the company that employs you owns computer programs developed for that company’s use while you were employed there. If the “company never thought to protect themselves” then they probably shouldn’t be in the business of computer programming. I can’t believe anyone would be that stupid.
-
-
#2 written by donfletcheryh 1 year ago
You can not sell your service to a company and then deny them the right to use the output of your work. The company has a right to use it, beyond question.
Now can you sell the same software to someone else? If you have not contracted to allow the employer exclusive use of the programs you write, you could sell them to someone else, but not exclusively.
It is practically impossible for a programmer to ever work again as a programmer if they have committed to never repeat the same programming for someone else. A programmer will use the same algorithms, even reinvent the same structures intentionally or otherwise. A good lawyer can almost always prove that the same programming has been reused because programmers to be good have to reuse the things that work.
- Comment Feed for this Post
yes,, it’s employer propery, when u are working with them using thier resources.