Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company
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Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company
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Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company
#2IANAL, but "would it be legal for me to delete..." is the completely wrong approach here. Instead...
- You were an hourly warehouse flunky, not any sort of professional programmer. While doing your warehouse job, you cobbled together a mish-mash of software stuff, on company computers, to try to make your job easier. With you there to fiddle and debug and update as needed, that worked pretty darn well.
- Now, you are leaving. Your layman's understanding is that the company legally owns all the software you made...as is. There ain't no "You Programming, Inc." in this situation, for your old employer to have any documentation, nor warranty, nor support contract from.
- Your suggestion is that the company delete the software, and revert to the previous procedures - which worked perfectly well. If it seemed worthwhile, a professional programming company - which could offer documentation, warranties, support, etc. - could probably duplicate the features of your stuff pretty quickly.
The goal being to convince the management of Warehouse, Inc. to order the deletion of your software from the company's computers.
Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company
#3There's a lot of answers stating that if the code was written by an employee during work hours, it's automatically owned by the company. Is that true? My understanding is the author would still retain copyright unless they've already entered into an agreement with their employer that anything they build during work hours is owned by the company. That kind of thing is pretty standard in employment agreements for software engineers, but for warehouse workers?
Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company
#4There's a lot of answers stating that if the code was written by an employee during work hours, it's automatically owned by the company. Is that true? My understanding is the author would still retain copyright unless they've already entered into an agreement with their employer that anything they build during work hours is owned by the company. That kind of thing is pretty standard in employment agreements for softw…
If it was written on site during work hours to facilitate assigned work, it'd be uphill battle to argue it wasn't work peformed for the employer.
Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company
#5There's a lot of answers stating that if the code was written by an employee during work hours, it's automatically owned by the company. Is that true? My understanding is the author would still retain copyright unless they've already entered into an agreement with their employer that anything they build during work hours is owned by the company. That kind of thing is pretty standard in employment agreements for softw…
If it was written on site during work hours to facilitate assigned work, it'd be uphill battle to argue it wasn't work peformed for the employer.
However copyright assignment still defaults to the creator, so it's still worth asking whether there were IP assignment clauses in the employment contract.
Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it was written on site during work hours to facilitate assigned work, it'd be uphill battle to argue it wasn't work peformed for the employer.
However copyright assignment still defaults to the creator, so it's still worth asking whether there were IP assignment clauses in the employment contract.
The creator in that case is the company. It defaults to them.
Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company
#7IANAL, but "would it be legal for me to delete..." is the completely wrong approach here. Instead... - You were an hourly warehouse flunky, not any sort of professional programmer. While doing your warehouse job, you cobbled together a mish-mash of software stuff, on company computers, to try to make your job easier. With you there to fiddle and debug and update as needed, that worked pretty darn well. - Now, you are…
Or, if you're more of the entrepreneurial mindset, convince management of the value of the software and offer that they can pay you to keep improving it.
Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
However copyright assignment still defaults to the creator, so it's still worth asking whether there were IP assignment clauses in the employment contract.
The creator in that case is the company. It defaults to them.
In California, it depends on whether you used equipment that belonged to your employer or not. In this case, a computer.
Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company
#9There's a lot of answers stating that if the code was written by an employee during work hours, it's automatically owned by the company. Is that true? My understanding is the author would still retain copyright unless they've already entered into an agreement with their employer that anything they build during work hours is owned by the company. That kind of thing is pretty standard in employment agreements for softw…
Using company equipment to produce the copyright work also gives the company a strong case for ownership of the IP.
Not using company equipment can be just as bad because now there's evidence you knowingly copied company records to a personal computer to build a competing product or for personal gain.
Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
The creator in that case is the company. It defaults to them.
In California, it depends on whether you used equipment that belonged to your employer or not. In this case, a computer.
Not just a computer... equipment could be anything needed in the course of developing -- or testing -- the software. I'm thinking of something like a warehouse management tool and you interfaced with a barcode reader or something like that.