State Trooper Fights For His Source Code

BarneyRabble writes to tell us that a Wisconsin State Trooper is fighting to maintain control of the source code for a program he wrote that helps officers write traffic tickets electronically. Praised by the state just 18 months ago, Trooper David Meredith is now suing the head of patrol claiming that the state is trying to illegally seize the source that he had developed on his own time. From the article: "Meredith, of Oconto Falls, defied an order from his bosses to relinquish the source code - the heart of the program - in October and instead deposited it with Dane County Circuit Judge David T. Flanagan, pending a ruling on who should control it. The case centers on how the software was developed. Department of Transportation attorney Mike Kernats said the State Patrol - a division of DOT - provided Meredith with a computer to write the software and gave him time off patrol duties so he could do the work. But Meredith said in court filings that he spent hundreds of hours off duty working on it, developing it almost entirely on his own time. He noted that he never signed a software licensing agreement."

Comments

Re:The code belongs to his employer.

[houghi]

The minute they provided him with any resource to work on it (work time, computer, etc...) it became theirs.

My boss provides me with my resources (money) so all that I get with these resources is his?

if the work is any any way related to his work domain it's theirs

So if I write some Linux kernel code on the PC I got by using my companies resources and they run one Linux machine, then they own that piece of code?

Wow, only I don't think so.