Apple Claims Ownership of Shareware

(54)T-Dub writes "Cricket Media recently released 'Netflix Fanatic', an OSX based shareware app that lets you manage your rental queue without logging on to Netflix. An article on Think Secret reveals the reason behind it's mysterious disappearance. Apparently the developer's employer, Apple, has claimed ownership over the application's name and source code. The developer claims that under Section 2870 of the California Labor Code this is illegal. The law states that if a company has an employment agreement with provisions saying employees must assign the rights of their inventions to their employer, those sections do not apply if the employee developed it on his or her own time, without using the employer's equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information. Within Apple, there's unsubstantiated speculation that Apple wants to include the Netflix Fanatic code in a new version of Sherlock." Also, they're presumably not too worried with employee morale.

Comments

Why not in the Apple section?

[waitigetit]

Why is this story not in the Apple section? Do only positive stories go there or something?

Re:That's how it works...

[lowmagnet]

And I still don't use stickies. What a dumb application. "Let's model something from the real world but on the monitor!" Yeah, right. You have to LAUNCH the stickies app for it to show your stickies. Not very handy. If it were a built-in to the WM, I'd use it all the time, though. Attaching certain stickies to windows would be better than a separate application that does just stickies.