RE: Work product (was RE: Midrange Knowledge test) -- MIDRANGE-L

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Steve Landess
> Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 9:01 PM
> To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
> Subject: Re: Work product (was RE: Midrange Knowledge test)
> 
> > > 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,
> In the absence of a written contract specifying otherwise, you're right.
I
> believe the U.S. Uniform Commercial Code does give both sides
non-exclusive
> rights.  My response was based on the fact that:
> 
> 1)  More often than not, as a full-time employee, a condition of
employment
> was  that I was required to sign an agreement that essentially gave all
> rights of ownership in any software I created to my employer.  Of course,
> they can't take away what's in your head...it's simple enough to recreate
a
> program for a new employer from scratch using the ideas that gave birth to
> the original, unless you also signed a non-compete agreement that
precluded
> such.
> 
> 2) Likewise, while working as a consultant for the last 16 years, many
times
> I have signed agreements that gave all ownership rights to the client -
> several of them being Fortune 200 companies.  It didn't matter to me - I
was
> getting paid by the hour, not for the intellectual property I was
creating.
> 
> Steve
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