What's the name of the company?
[deleted]
An apology to open source
141–150 of 259 posts
Re: An apology to open source
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
The IP of my final year (UK) university project belongs to the University not me, and not to the company that was sponsoring me for my final year.
That just shows how ridiculous the laws in UK/US are. Around here, what you're describing would be expressly against the law.
It would be helpful if you were more specific than just "Around here".
Re: An apology to open source
#143Don't just take it down. Destroy it. Make sure that any benefit your employer was receiving from it vanishes. If they claim ownership, despite the work having been done in your free time, demand the overtime pay. Make it clear that OSHA will be involved if they decline. Hardline dickery deservers to be repaid in kind. Ah: Edit still available: Destroy was the wrong word. Make inaccessible to everyone, including the e…
OP is apparently in South Africa according to his twitter profile
Re: An apology to open source
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a non-American, that concept is very alien to me. Say, if a burger-flipping cook at a fast-food joint cooks burgers for himself and a few friends at home, is he infringing? Are those burgers company property? Baffled...
Let me explain. My company's employee manual had a clause stating (and I paraphrase here) that any intellectual property (patentable invention, copyrightable materials, etc) created by the employee was owned by the employer. Technically, this means that they own the bedtime stories that I make up for my kids. And certainly any open-source code that I may write in my free time, even if I used absolutely NO company res…
Well... this strays into the territory of unenforceability and severability.
You know how practically every contract you sign anymore has something to the effect of 'invalidating some portion of this contract does not invalidate the rest of it'? The courts have held that an unenforceable clause in a contract that is not indicated as 'severable' will make the entire contract unenforceable. Instead of doing the pleasant thing, and making contracts that stay within in the bounds they are allowed by law, companies started claiming that every portion of every contract was severable.
What this means is that they can throw any kind of crap in there, whether they could actually invoke it or not. Add that to the fact that the majority of the population of the US doesn't even read the contracts they sign (seriously, they don't), and companies are incentivized to throw the kitchen sink into their documents, and leave the decisions about what is enforceable until later.
Specifically, the region of your work that they can claim ip rights over is tightly limited by the definition of 'work for hire', regardless of what they try to claim in your contract.
Re: An apology to open source
#145An open note to Nick's Employers - 1) If you are a technology company, this is Harakiri ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku ). You are alienating every developer who is worth her salt. If you have a recruiting arm, and they are trying to recruit, god be with them. Ofcourse, you think people will never come to know, but this has the potential to be a good story and press will pick it up. I will not be surprised if…
You have only one side of the story. Maybe the company doesn't have the rights on the code and cannot decide to open source it. Maybe they're making money with the code and open sourcing it is killing the business. Maybe they have a procedure before open sourcing code. If tomorrow I wake up with a developer open sourcing part of the work he does for us I would sure be very unhappy. You just can't condone that kind of…
Nick's words: It had been my final year university project I had been working on for a couple of months
Re: An apology to open source
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
He built it during University, so before he started working for the employer. They may have a legitimate business concern, but that doesn't change the fact that it's Nick's IP and he can do what he wants with it.
That's true if and only if he didn't continue to refine and contribute to the code after entering employment, and specifically , didn't use it at his place of employment. Many places have terrible and unhealthy, but legally binding contracts regarding work done in your own time while employed. :( Without more information we can't know, but its far from given that their position is legally ambiguous.
I've seen employment contracts that try to claim IP developed before you even took the job. Probably completely unenforceable, but I really wish that over-reaching contracts like that were punishable to prevent the ultra-conservative "ask for everything, and maybe get less" approach.
Re: An apology to open source
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me explain. My company's employee manual had a clause stating (and I paraphrase here) that any intellectual property (patentable invention, copyrightable materials, etc) created by the employee was owned by the employer. Technically, this means that they own the bedtime stories that I make up for my kids. And certainly any open-source code that I may write in my free time, even if I used absolutely NO company res…
Well... this strays into the territory of unenforceability and severability. You know how practically every contract you sign anymore has something to the effect of 'invalidating some portion of this contract does not invalidate the rest of it'? The courts have held that an unenforceable clause in a contract that is not indicated as 'severable' will make the entire contract unenforceable. Instead of doing the pleasan…
Yes, but severability just means that a clause which is illegal will not be enforced. It doesn't mean you can ignore clauses which are undesirable or just plain stupid. Any clause which is LEGAL will still stand. And as far as I know, both state of PA and US law permit a person to sign away the copywrite on any work they wish to. So I think (although I am not a lawyer) that this clause would have had a good chance of being enforceable.
Re: An apology to open source
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was he also asked by his employer to take down his "final year university project" that this was supposed to be? That sounds a little bit incongruous to me. Or was the "final year university project" also somehow related to his job output preceding in the creation of said final year project?
The IP of my final year (UK) university project belongs to the University not me, and not to the company that was sponsoring me for my final year.
Even if you are a fully paid scholar at univ? I mean not even a penny in scholarship at an institution? I don't think it will be such an umbrella rule. Is it?
Re: An apology to open source
#149Re: An apology to open source
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well... this strays into the territory of unenforceability and severability. You know how practically every contract you sign anymore has something to the effect of 'invalidating some portion of this contract does not invalidate the rest of it'? The courts have held that an unenforceable clause in a contract that is not indicated as 'severable' will make the entire contract unenforceable. Instead of doing the pleasan…
Yes, but severability just means that a clause which is illegal will not be enforced. It doesn't mean you can ignore clauses which are undesirable or just plain stupid. Any clause which is LEGAL will still stand. And as far as I know, both state of PA and US law permit a person to sign away the copywrite on any work they wish to. So I think (although I am not a lawyer) that this clause would have had a good chance of…
> And as far as I know, both state of PA and US law permit a person to sign away the copywrite on any work they wish to
They do, but not until it exists. You can't sign away work until you've done it, unless it fits the work-for-hire definition.
Now, you can write a contract agreeing to transfer the IP afterward, but then you have to actually perform that transfer, and if you don't you can get sued for breach of contract, but not for infringement.
It's possible that there's case-law interpreting this type of contract to imply a commitment to transfer IP, but I don't think it's very likely.