RE: Work product (was RE: Midrange Knowledge test)

Booth:

'Working on your own stuff', using employers' equipment, etc., is a separate 
question and should be discouraged without permission.

My thoughts were more along the lines of basic business programming -- order 
entry, shipping, etc., where the programming is not intended as a marketable 
product. If the employer is in the business of selling order entry programs, 
then it's essentially guaranteed that the programming belongs exclusively to 
the employer.

But if the company is in the business of selling kitchen clocks or cat toys or 
bicycle seats, the order entry program isn't marketable. It isn't what the 
company sells.

As an addition to your portfolio of sample code for a new employer, there's no 
conflict. Such work product is commonly shared with non-exclusive rights by 
employer and employee.

Obviously, if a contract had been signed to the contrary, the question is 
mostly settled, though the courts would have final say and I suspect that a 
challenge by the author would be upheld. Anyway, in the two cases where I was 
presented with such a contract as a condition of employment, I said "No way, 
not without these changes" and the contract was adjusted without problem.

My experience has been that the relevant clauses in the contracts are primarily 
"standard" clauses that almost nobody worries about. (Again, this is aside from 
software houses.) Rational changes should be easy to effect.

And personal opinion, if there's resistance to making such changes, the company 
is probably trouble as an employer.

Tom Liotta

midrange-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>   1. RE: Work product (was RE: Midrange Knowledge test) (Booth Martin)
>
>"Nothing sterilizes like sunlight"
>
>Under any circumstances I would think one would want to keep an employer
>informed and allow him to say yea or nay.    Trying to skirt the law in a
>clandestine way leaves one open to questions of integrity and ethics.
>
>My experience is that some places don't mind us working on our own stuff on
>lunch break or after hours while other shops are very nervous about it.  In
>any event I always show them what I did before I show anyone else.  If they
>re nervous about it I delete it and take a different tack. 
>
>Besides, now there are plenty of cheap/free places to have our own account. 
> 
>-------Original Message-------
> 
>Another consideration is how much of the code you're working with/developing
>is copyrighted.  Copyright law is Federal and covers "derivative works" as
>well.
> 
>The absence of a "work for hire" agreement means little if your employer
>sells a package with copyrighted code.  So, if you're cloning an existing
>report (we still have reports in the Brave New World, right?), stripping out
>"file" I/O, and replacing it with SQL, don't take a copy of the changed
>program because it's still copyrighted as a derivative work even if you
>delete the copyright notice.
> 
>-reeve
> 
>>
>> > > Steve Landess wrote:
>> >  >3)  Many if not most companies would *not* give you permission to take
>> > >copies of code that you wrote.
>>
>> > Then Tom wrote:
>>
>> > midrange-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>> >
>> > Last time I seriously checked, admittedly some ten years ago, _most_
>> > companies didn't have the right to stop you. My current position is with
>> > a software firm and therefore what I write here for the products is
>> > definitely owned and controlled by the company.
>> >
>> > But that has not been true for any other company or organization I've
>> > worked for in the past 25+ years, that includes Packard Bell-NEC.
>> > Because what I wrote at PB-NEC was standard business function rather
>> > than marketable product, both sides had non-exclusive rights.
>> >
>> > I'm certainly interested in what current law might say.

-- 
Tom Liotta
The PowerTech Group, Inc.
19426 68th Avenue South
Kent, WA 98032
Phone  253-872-7788 x313
Fax    253-872-7904
http://www.powertech.com


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