[Phpwm] Intellectual Property Agreements

[Alex Mace]

In terms of solictors, at my previous employers we used to use Rickerby's in
Cheltenham - they seemed pretty hot on IP, plus the guy there who dealt with
IP was one of those kids on Jim'll Fix It who ate their food on a roller
coaster. They provided us with a spec contract for £600 which covered all
points of IP and basically said that you grant them a license to use your
software, but you retain all IP for it. That nicely covers you from them
creating new works based on your work.

I think it depends on what grounds you did the work at the moment - if you
did it as an employee of theirs then they own the work. Otherwise as Dave
says, I believe you own it.

There was also some good stuff on IP in the discussion part of episode 15 of
the .net podcast - http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/podcast

Hope all that helps!

Alex


On 21/09/2007, Bronwen Reid <info at bronwenreid.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Anyone been in this situation?
>
> One of my clients has asked me to provide a letter assigning them all
> ownership of the work I've done for them.
>
> Now, I'm quite happy for them to own the application in question
> (basically a shopping cart with extra knobs and go-faster stripes), and
> I understand their concerns (what if I get a job with another company?
> what if I approach one of their competitors?) but I want to be able to
> reuse code.
>
> There are also several paragraphs of boilerplate employee agreement
> which I've been asked to include, and am not very happy about.  For
> example, the company owns any "improvement in procedure"
>
> "Any discovery, invention, improvement in procedure, trade mark, design
> or copyright work made, discovered or produced by you in the course of
> your employment in connection with or in any way affecting or relating
> to, or capable of being used or adapted for use in connection with, the
> business of the Company shall be disclosed to the Company straight away
> and be the absolute property of the Company."
>
> Basically I want to say "you own the final application, I won't try and
> sell it to anyone else or take it away from you, but I can and will
> reuse techniques, code etc. in other applications for other people"
>
> How do other people deal with this?  Anyone want to recommend a solicitor?
>
> Bronwen
>
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