Ask HN: My firm wants my home-made project, what to do?

Did you work on it at anytime during work hours or on work computer or other property?

Are they offering to buy it from you or just claim that it belongs to them because you are an employee.

I don't have any answers, but these questions are important.

Nope never worked on it during work hours. It was coded at my home in my personal desktop. Its not related to anything with what the company is into. They are just looking at it as a future product of the company,

You left out some important information.

Are they trying to force you to give them your home-made/side project as they believe they are entitled to the software due to your employment? Or, are they interesting in purchasing the product?

How did 'they' become aware of it? I would talk to a few lawyers.

Your wording is very vague but I'm going to assume when you say 'your firm wants your home-project', you mean they want to buy it, rather than they are demanding you hand it over under some kind of IP rights squabble.

Do you want cash and/or stock for the sale? Or, do you want a %age of future royalties of the sale (that might tricky if they want to incorporate it into a bigger product). (Or a combination of both cash/stock and %age)

Do you want to remain involved in the project, or even moved into the team that would continue to work on this? If so you should get that contractually agreed as part of the sale.

How much do you feel the project is work, and separately, how much has the company indicated they are willing to spend? If it is more than, say, $20k I would go and see a lawyer to draw up the contractual issues. Less then $20k, you can probably do this on your own given the amount is small. You could also incentivize the lawyer to negotiate on your behalf in return for a %age of the sale - particularly worthwhile if you are not a good negotiator. It's also a 3rd party, so none of the mind games that could be used against you by negotiating with your own boss/boss's boss/etc comes into play.

You might be wise to incorporate the project into a company, transfer the IP to the company and then sell them the company.

You should also review your code to make sure you are not using any OS code that has an incompatible license with selling the code.

Perhaps you could provide more answers and people could advise you better.