Ownership Question?
Out of context: Reply #5
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- sp0
i have delt with this before.
it depends on many many factors.
for example: does it state in your contract with them, as a full time employee do they retain ownership of work? some don't think about this as policy, due to lack of knowledge, and you can claim that it's your software. note: most do include it in the company policy though.
did you sign an nda?
did you work on it from home, with personal equipment and libs?
is the software itself proprietary? does it only work for and with the company you developed it for?
do they have a, or plan to, patent it?
etc etc.
while at my previous employer, i worked on a proprietary technology for their product. a combo of firmware, hardware and software to act as the controlling system for the product (the product being hvac equipment).
the little boxes that control temp, humidity, etc in building environment systems...they have a user interface that relies on the firmware for operation. we wrote custom systems, using xml for the ui elements..bla bla...
anyway - the point being...we wrote it in-house, wrote it as proprietary software, the company requested patents for it...and so on - so the product can't be used by anyone else, due to the development characteristics, and they respectfully own all parts.
now, with my knowledge of the development though, i could turn around and write a similar application as open-source or something like that, as long as it wasn't the same as the proprietary one i developed as an employee.
taking the existing source you've been working on and trying to re-sell it to other people would probably violate an agreement with the company - but, creating a brand new "similar" app - outside the bounds of patented technologies would be legal.
:)
it might still raise feathers, but i doubt they could seriously harm you.