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Owning Your Own IP at a Company?
An anonymous reader asks: "I work as Sys Admin for a sporting company, and I'm the only 'Computer Guy' there. Recently I've been doing a lot of work writing code for their webpage and other related areas, and since I was up for contract renewal I raised the question of Intellectual Property. Now, in the contract there is a section which says that computer records/lists and such belong to the company (ie player registrations and other semi-sensitive data), but beyond that my manager was quite happy for me to own the code that I've written. Neither of us is very good with writing contracts, so he said 'Draft a document and get back to me'. Now what sort of stuff should I put in it?" This is a situation many of us may hopefully find ourselves in. For those of you who have been through this before, how did you end up structuring your contacts? Please note, when it comes to contracts, nothing beats seeking professional legal advice.
"I want it to express that there is an amicable agreement between us, that I own my code (including miscellany like shell scripts) and that they can keep using my code, in the normal fashion, after I've left the company. Is there anyone else who's in a similar situation? How did you write your contracts?"
Hire an IP lawyer.
I'm not an experienced contract writer, but I'd make sure you have the basics covered:
Company has rights to use, and modify code for company use.
You have rights to use, modify, and **sell** code.
You may want to grant the company rights to sell the code also depending on the situation, but I assume you want to keep the rights to the code to be able to resell it as a general solution.
Check out the IEEE USA's sample consulting agreement at http://www.ieeeusa.org/business/library.asp>. You will find two approaches to dealing with intellectual property issues. One way the consultant retains all rights and delivers a license, and the other way, the consultant delivers all rights but retains a license.