Slashdot Mirror
Losing My Software Rights?
vintagepc writes "Having written a piece of software as part of my research employment, I now face (and will later face again, with other software I've developed), the issue of intellectual property rights. The legal department stated that if I was paid by the University to produce the software, the University would own all rights to it. This is supposedly black and white, not a gray area. However, I was hired as a research student, not directly by the University, and also via a research award (NSERC). Furthermore, it turns out that faculty members here, in fact, retain their intellectual rights to any software they write. At this point, I can still back out, since I have not explicitly agreed to the conditions, but this decision must be made soon. So, I turn to the Slashdot community to ask: Are they allowed to completely strip my rights to the software? If anyone has had any similar experiences, then what was the outcome? Additionally, is this a normal action, or do I have some maneuvering room?"
All you can do is negotiate. What you sign away is law.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
get it in writing.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
Of course you can convey your copyrights. This is a silly post.
Talk to a fucking lawyer.
Or back down.
Do what all the other cool grad students who are changing the world are doing and open source it!
If you were to talk about this with the university then then you might learn that there's no problem but then you might indicate that you're going do claim ownership and cause more trouble.
Don't ask Slashdot for any legal questions.
These are all very good questions, but you should not be asking Slashdot, you should be asking your attorney. Not having one is no excuse. For something like this, with the ramifications being as big (and permanent) as they are, you need to get one.
Tell them you feel strongly about retaining your rights over your software and see if they maintain that it's required to transfer rights to them. Get the facts from them. If they say you have to, but you really don't want to, don't take the job. Of course, make sure you get it in writing.
Well, it's all pretty black and white there... is the university paying you? Does the check say "Harvard University" or does it say "HRUMPTHING Project, LLC?"
I mean it's not like your playing football where you win a T-Shirt and the university takes home 100's of millions in TV revenue! You can speak to your employer about what you want out of the deal and see if there's any possibility.
But just like football - chances are you're going to get squat for this - and hope for glorious rewards in the after-life (aka.. the real world).
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
If you produce it in your free time and it isn't related to your work, then the company is unfairly trying to take your work.
If you are simply doing what they ask you to you are doing your job.
The question here is, did the University get the grant or did you? Would you have been able to get the grant if you weren't at the university because of the credentials of the institution? Were you hired as a research associate into an existing area that is managed by someone else?
If so, put your ego aside and accept that you are growing as a professional.
Now if you have the credo to be a principal researcher then find an institution that will provide you the room you want to have more ownership of your IP.
Too often we think we are the only ones who can do what we do when in reality there are many talented developers out there.
We have to accept as a profession that we are driven by business needs at some point.
(see topic).
Contracts can't violate laws, so you can't sign away your rights. They can't, for example, appropriate code you've written before and other people's code you happen to use.
That being said, Look Out! Don't sign anything you don't agree with if you can avoid it. What you have not signed can't be held against you. Talk to a real lawyer, not the mickey mouse guy representing the University against you.
No calls now, I'm
First off, I am not a lawyer.
Second if you haven't signed a contract that gives your intellectual property / inventions / authorship / works to the University then you own it, plain and simple. You as an individual have to willingly and explicitly relinquish your rights, they can't just take them.
Meanwhile just release whatever you want to the public under whatever license you want. If they complain, do what everyone else does and sarcastically feign ignorance and say "well, we never agreed to that".
Sad to say it, but welcome to the real world. Software engineers who contribute to open source have to deal with this sort of stuff very frequently because corporations typically have a blanket "inventions" contract that one must sign to work there - even the good ones - and yes it does suck.
Cheers
-b
Why do people as Slashdot these questions... GET A LAWYER!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
According to NSERC no (NSERC Grant Award IP Policy) Specifically, "The Agencies do not retain or claim any ownership of, or exploitation rights to, intellectual property or copyright developed with grant funds. These rights are owned by the Institution and/or by the inventor." You need to check with policies you have in place with your institution. Many universities do claim IP and it is usually addressed in the student handbook, or somewhere in university policy. Look at stanford they own google's page rank patend.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
> Are they allowed to completely strip my rights to the software?
Um, they are allowed to ask for anything they want (that is not illegal) in a contract, and you are allowed to either sign it or not. If you are paid by them and write the software on their time and sign a contract saying they own it, you don't HAVE any rights for them to "strip".
You are also allowed to negotiate, although I wouldn't hold my breath...
Yes they can take away all your rights to the software, but no you shouldn't allow them to do it.
First, I've been a grad student at one university and a professor at another, and I've always avoided signing these agreements. It turns out that if you just avoid signing them and aren't too confrontational about it, you can easily slip through the cracks.
Second, you should talk to your professors and see if they will allow you to develop software publicly under some irrevocable license like the GPL or BSD. With revision control software like git, it's pretty easy just to throw the repository on your home page and make everything you do available to the world (including yourself) on a royalty-free basis. Import some GPL-ed third-party code into your project for extra protection.
Finally, sometimes professors do try to exploit grad students for the purposes of launching their startup companies, etc. If you feel that you are going to be in a position where your research is compromised (for instance because your results are no longer reproducible by the community), then you should find another research group to work with!
Details are different in every case, find a lawyer if you're going to get worked up over it.
It's usually not an issue if you don't intend to commercialise your software, especially if you explicitly release the software as being free for non-commercial use...
Simon
It's really not that hard: read your employment contract, and if you don't understand it, talk with a lawyer. Or better yet, post your employment contract here, and get the benefits of the slashdot community's deep knowledge of contract law :)
You're in Canada, right? There's a reasonable chance that your university has a law department. Visit and find someone there who can answer your question based on their expertise in IP and contract law. After all, you wouldn't ask Slashdotters about excising intramedullary spinal cord tumors, because most of us don't have a firm background in neurology. What makes you think we're any more qualified to provide a meaningful legal opinion in your jurisdiction?
As it has been said on other topics you should consult a competent lawyer rather than slashdot. However, a written agreement that said that the university agreed that you rather than they owned the copyright would probably settle the issue.
If the university views that they own the copyright and you also claim it, then the university could ask a court to settle the issue. In the most general terms it would depend on whether you were an employee of the university and this was during the normal course of your employment. If this was separate from your normal employment you would probably hold the copyright, otherwise your employer would, assuming that there was no agreement that said otherwise in either case.
Payment for creation of copyrighted material (outside of employment) does not generally transfer the copyright to the payer, unless there is a separate signed agreement to the effect that the work is a work for hire (a term which does not apply to software).
Stop whining and do whatever researchers do, get paid and move along. Maybe you can learn something about the real world.
just rename the variables
As a research student you are "hired" by the university. End of discussion. Your tuition and stipend are paid to you from research grant money that is owned by the university/professor.
Faculty members at some universities may retain their intellectual property rights. This is because there is a separate contract negotiation that takes place between faculty and universities. You [the student] are not part of this agreement.
At every PhD institution I know of, Teaching Assistants and Research Assistants are employees. In fact, third-rate employees. You get no health benefits, you get no retirement benefits and you get no intellectual property benefits. Basically, you get no benefit other than an effective scholarship.
You're screwed. They own your software. It is black and white.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Now is not the time to complain.
Universities get given grants and researchers get hired by the university using that grant.
Your case may be different, but I doubt it.
Just rewrite it.. they don't own the ideas.
How we know is more important than what we know.
First, universities always treat faculty differently. You're just a student researcher. Don't expect faculty rights. It's crappy that's the way the world works, but it does.
Most places consider software written while being paid for by them labor for hire. As such, they own what you create. In this case, the intellectual property rights to the software. This isn't that different from a construction worker building a building - he doesn't get to take what he made when he leaves. The difference is that software is infinitely reproducible in a way that doesn't harm the original.
Still, this is par for the course. Work for Google, Google owns the code you write and you can't take it with you when you leave. Work for Microsoft, MS owns the code you make and you can't take it with you when you leave. Work in this position, the University will own the code you write and you can't take it with you when you leave.
You might be able to negotiate something nice - Universities are non-profits and if you argue for an open-source license they might be genuinely receptive. If you want to push, think of it from the University's standpoint: does it help the school (to give you the code)? does it promote the school's mission (to give you the code)? does it promote the school (to give you the code)? That's unlikely, but under a FOSS license it might promote academic research and the school might like the openness of it and the possible free promotion they'd get if it caught on.
That cannot take your own intellectual property that is in your head. All the lessons you have learned making the project is still in your head. Nothing is stopping you from making some derivative work based on what you learned. I have worked in Consulting for a decade and all my work I do at work belongs to the customer not me. So I am not about to get a sympathetic on your situation. There is a lot of code that I cannot reuse. However with my lessons learned with each project I tend to reuse my ideas and make new code to do similar things. I bet if you do it the second time around then it will often be better then the first as you may not have half you code bringing you to a wrong solution then to have a patch to bring you to the working method.
Computer Programming code is just stuff for the computer to translate into a bunch of instructions to run. It really isn't free speech of your ideas. That can be represented in more formal less technical ways (good specs, written documents etc...). Your ideas are yours, just like if you made a physical object and the college decided to keep the object. You still know how you made the object and can make it again or even better.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The default assumptions are that if you're paid as an employee (IRS form W-2 sent to you at the start of a new year) or using their resources such as computers and office space then you are writing a work-for-hire and they own the copyright.
If you are being paid as a contractor (IRS form 1099) and using your own equipment and place to generate the software, then you own the copyright and are licensing a copy to them.
Of course, this can be changed by a specific agreement.
Bottom line: If you plan on keeping any rights, make sure there's a document that says so. If you can't come to an agreement, don't take the job.
Depends on the terms and conditions of your contract, and the terms and conditions of any other documents that your contract refers to. If you were employed by NSERC it depends on your contract with them.
It is very common for universities in the UK and Australia to include terms in contracts that include transfering all rights to any discoveries or inventions to the university. That applies to students, employees, researchers, anyone on projects sponsored by the university, etc.
If you're not sure, hire a solicitor or whatever legal advice you have to hand.
Is your code really so special? If you could make millions with it, why didn't you just do that in the first place?
expandfairuse.org
What he does with it is completely different to whether he has rights or not.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
fff
lowercase lowercase letters
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!!
lowercase lowercase letters
*POINTS FINGER COVERED IN BOOGERS*
lowercase lowercase letters
Of course, this is slashdot, and IANAL. But having a little experience, this is my take on things:
If your creative duties were supervised by the University - that is, they told you what program to write, and how to write it, and your duties included writing code - your chances of winning a court case in your favor are very small.
Teachers and professors are in a different category because, generally speaking, they are not producing a "work for hire" - but are instead hired for their role as a teacher or lecturer. The University does not retain creative control over their work; does not proscribe what is produced; and does not require them to produce code as part of their duties. That is, the code is incidental to their work. Thus, they can often retain copyright of the code they produce.
From your description, this does not sound like the case at all. Instead, from your terse description, I, and a court, could reasonably conclude that you were hired to write code (among other duties), and hence, your employer owns the rights to it.
Unless you have a well-documented case to the contrary, it would be safest to assume your University's legal department is correct.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Talk to a real lawyer please
Copyright always belongs to the creator unless prior agreements were signed, or the rights have explicitly been moved afterwards. It's not relevant where the work was made - e.g. on university equipment - unless (again) you signed a document which states that using university equipment/facilities moves the copyright to the uni.
Copyright isn't something a third party can claim - it has to be granted by the creator, either before starting on it or afterwards. Not that this is irreversible: once you granted it it can't be undone.
several posts say talk to an attorney, in detail, when they can READ your contract, and they're right. IANAL. However, since this is the Internet, I want to take this opportunity to point out several substantial flaws in your submission.
0. Posting here and not getting an attorney. Fail.
1. A purely ownership and non-personal right like this, it's very unlikely there's any prohibition against you signing it away. (Unlike, e.g. some noncompetes which are SOMETIMES unenforceable.) Fail.
2. If you sign this when you obviously (and demonstrably - you posted it here!) thought they intended it to mean you had no ownership, the courts will not look kindly on you turning around and saying you don't believe that. That's called 'bad faith'. Even if the contract WAS weak, if it's clear that both parties understood the same intent, usually that's what happens.
And there's a good reason for that. Knowingly signing that when you clearly believe they mean that if you don't intend to carry it through makes you a liar.
Fail.
3. That the faculty, who have a totally different contract, get to keep their work has no bearing on your contract. Fail.
4. The faculty don't even meet the standard you set out - which is 'if you're paid TO develop software' - which they aren't. They're paid to uphold the educational mission of the institution and do their research. The actual software is (at least contractually) secondary.
I'm not telling you not to take the job -
I only see two glimmers of hope here:
- If the UNIVERSITY's contract with NSERC specifies something different, you count point that out to them.
- I don't know if this is in your goalset, but depending on the U, if you WANTED to open source your project (whatever license) the U may allow that - and you MIGHT be able to get them to approve allowing that BEFORE hiring you. YOU will still own none of it. They'll own all the rights to sell a closed source version, etc., and they could un-open-source their future versions. (Which, if you were GPL, no one ELSE could legally do) But they can't exactly 'unlicense' the code they agreed to release.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
The answer likely depends on your answer to the following question: Are you self-employed, or are you an employee? This is a matter of fact and is determined by conditions of your contract.
If you are an employee, your goose is cooked.
If you are self employed, then you maintain code ownership.
When arranging future contracts with your university, you should ensure that you are self employed.
Agree to them owning the rights. But insist that any such software be licensed under the GPL. They get what they want, and yet everyone can still use the software later on.
Unless, of course, you were planning on keeping it closed-source?
Here in Oz, it is a normal course of action by a University to retain joint ownership of any created intellectual property.
You do retain ownership, but so does the University.
From what I've seen in my own experience as a graduate research ass't in computer science, it's pretty standard practice to require everyone less than a professor to relinquish all rights to their code and work in general.
That being said, it totally sucks and I would try to very politely fight it if I were you.
I had to rewrite a bunch of code because of this issue, which actually turned out to be a really great and fun challenge, but was a bit of a pain nonetheless.
~ Anonymous Howard
If not you some Chinese or Indian grad student will write the same thing for one-tenth the cost.
'Work for hire' contracts where they retain the intellectual property are the norm. Exceptions for faculty (which it sounds like you are not) are the norm. Grant money almost always flows (legally speaking) through the university--PI's who write grants and hire grad students not withstanding. Even folks in completely soft money offices (100% funded by outside sources) are still (usually) 100% university employees and bound by university contracts.
You can ask for a different contract. They will likely look at you funny and route you to someone else until you give up. You have no leverage.
Are you an undergrad student, grad student, postdoc, or something else? Are you paid on a fellowship, research grant or something else?
You say you were "hired as a research student". What is that? Are you an employee or not?
You say "not directly by the University". Either you work for the university or you don't. Do you work for one of the affiliated institutes of the university?
You say "and also via a research award". That doesn't answer the question of are you an employee or not.
Dig out your pay stubs. Are you paid on a T4? Then you are likely an employee. Are you paid on a T4A or one of the other T4 variants? Then it is likely you are not an employee (even if you might be treated like one).
"The legal department stated that if I was paid by the University to produce the software, the University would own all rights to it."
Not true. They may have said if you were employed to produce the software, then it belongs to the university. Paid & employed are very different. Lots of people are paid by universities without being employees.
Look up your school's IP policy. Often they specify a sharing of rights between the school and the student/researcher/professor. Why? If the school keeps all the profits (if any), then the student/researcher/professor is highly UNMOTIVATED to produce intellectual property.
Further, having been involved with patents at the University of Toronto, I have to tell you that the majority of intellectual property doesn't make any money whatsoever. Looks good on a CV though. You might be an exception.
or better, read the contract before signing it.
"Violence is the last refuge of the competent, and, generally, the first refuge of the incompetent" - Thing_1
What's your goal? If it's to release it under some open source license, I imagine that wouldn't be hard unless it's really worth some money and the university knows it. If you want to commercialize it, that may be another matter completely.
I've worked on research projects at UofT under NSERC awards. They were released as BSD or (L)GPL. Nobody talked to any legal departments because the projects probably weren't worth actual money to us (not that we cared either way, really) and, as tools or systems for research, the expectation by the academic community is often access to the code and we were happy to oblige.
If you were paid for it, I suspect the decision isn't yours to make, but within a university environment I imagine it's pretty easy to open it up, if that is indeed your goal.
Professors keep IP rights? Sounds like Waterloo. I'd think they'd be pretty progressive in this area.
I know with facebook, and yahoo, and even MS, everyone thinks the code they write in school is going to make them a millionaire. Maybe it will, but, seriously, is that the case. It would be hard to state the amount of research code me and the group I worked with created. Signal decomposition, algorithms to assemble and decode telemetry, data acquisition when it required homemade custom interfaces, full robotic controls for 20 i/o systems, full windowing systems before MS had MS Windows, abstraction layers for output. You name it. It was good fun and good practice, but the reward was the opportunity to have time to do such things, to test such things in a relaxed environment, to learn from people who knew more than we did.
If there is a worry about about the code being commercialized or otherwise misused, release it to the wild. Publish it in a journal. Put in on sourceforge. Mail a copy to 100 friends. Don't get caught in the IP fiasco that is ruining the world, where every little thing is clutched to like it is the only thing one will ever create. And, especially, don't pay attention to any of the bullshit posted on /., including this.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
If they are paying you, I don't think they have much leverage.
Are you a grad student? Even if you coded it, and even if you believe it to be "your" work, you probably can't claim complete ownership, since there was likely some input from your advisor and perhaps other people in the group.
My students regularly write code, but my input is almost certainly present in the choice of problem, and usually in algorithm choice, design, debugging and verification. But the student would write close to 100% of the code.
In practice, very few codes written for academic purposes can be commercially exploited -- is this a money issue, or a "moral" issue??
In my group (in physics/cosmology), we don't necessarily release our codes, since they can often be used for more than one project, and we want to harvest the full fruits of our labor (and they are likely only of use to other academic scientists in any case). However, I would not share or reuse a code a student or post-doc of mine had worked on without discussing it with the person concerned, and I would expect my students to pay me the same courtesy once they move on (and so far they have).
My advice is to talk to your advisor and don't be an ass. Unless there really is money involved it is likely that no-one is trying to screw you. If the issue is academic credit, you should simply make sure that the project itself is described in a paper which will be cited by other users. And, if you can, release the source, with a good README since the academic world ran on "reputation" long before eBay was invented, and writing a widely used tool will do you no end of good.
A lot of Canadian Universities have policies whereby the University owns the IP, but then will sign it back to the inventors under certain circumstances, or set up a revenue sharing arrangement. What University are you at? Also, what is NSERC's policy? Is the lawyer you talked to in the tech transfer office? What does the Uni intend to do with the IP?
I am at U of T and have had very positive interactions with the tech transfer office (as opposed to some other parts of the U of T bureaucracy, which well deserve their "tar pit" reputation).
I agree. While there are lawyers at every institution who seem to believe that protecting intellectual property rights is ALWAYS good for the institution, often it is not. The purpose of your research fellowship is to produce knowledge, and it ain't knowledge until it's published.
In the US, at least, if you publish the algorithm before it is patented, it is much harder to "protect" the property. And it is a very unusual University that has policies against research fellows publishing papers. Moreover, some journals have strict policies about the availability of software that is described in their publications. So, by doing what you are paid to do -- research and publish -- you gain considerable freedom.
Do you believe in imaginary property or something? Information wants to be free, you know... New York County Lawyer will be helping your University (or whoever else gets a hold of your code) to dodge any and all legal challenges you may pursue — you wouldn't even know, who they are, because the University will bravely refuse your subpoenas against John (and Jane) Does.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If you've worked at a university for any length of time, you'd know that the reason faculty retain some (or all) rights to the products of their research is because they specifically negotiated that as part of their initial hiring agreement.
Otherwise, as others have mentioned, this is simply "work for hire" - and you don't have the rights to what you've produced, because they're paying you to do this.
#DeleteChrome
rights? you have no rights
-1 Epic Fail
First and foremost, like all the other posts here, I'll tell you that you should not pursue legal advice from blogs like Slashdot. Even if people here claim to be lawyers, they likely are not, and even if they actually are, you are NOT being given legal advice (in the best case, you're getting their hasty first impressions).
Second: Such ownership rights are usually solidified upon employment by means of signing some kind of contract that agrees on who will own what. Without that, there may still be precedents for one way or another, but there may be enough ambiguity to work out a compromise that is favorable to all involved parties.
Offer to give them the copyright in exchange for an "non-exclusive infinite license" (that is not a legal term), effectively entitling you to use it outside the courtroom as if you had copyright, so you could sell licenses, GPL it, etc. If that's too strong (or more than you want), ask for a GPL, AGPL, or LGPL (the first two preserve the profitability of the copyright, since closed-source software is considerably more salable). They still get to use it however they like as the copyright holders, and your Free Software use probably won't get in their way anyway. If you think they'd be game for it, start the haggling in the other direction -- offer them the infinite license. If they take that, you'll probably have to include some kind of clause covering what happens if legal action is needed to protect it, as the copyright holder is the only party that can act on that (which is why the FSF requires copyright attribution for all GNU projects).
If you want FREE legal advice, you may be able to ask the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) for it at http://www.softwarefreedom.org/
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
According to work for hire doctrine, if you are in their employ and make something having to do with the job, they own the copyright. In order to retain rights, you have to have that specifically stated in the contract--the assumption is that the employer gets all rights unless otherwise explicitly stated. It used to be that this would only really apply to stuff you did while at work and with the employer's equipment, but that's changing--these days, even if you do stuff on your own time, at home, with your own equipment, it's very likely that your employers will be able to claim ownership if it has anything to do with your work. So get it into your contract that you own the rights, but don't be surprised if your employers take issue with that and hire someone else instead.
Better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission. Publish the source publicly, online. Universities shouldn't be holding any IP at all, anyway.
Find a different career.
* Dissy puts on the lawyers hat
As your attorney, I advise you to rent a very fast car with no top. And you'll need the cocaine. Tape recorder for special music. Acapulco shirts. Get the hell out of L.A. for at least 48 hours.
* Dissy takes off the lawyer hat
* Dissy puts on his robe and wizards hat
Er wait...
It's spelled:
LOSE
Not l- oo -se (as in moose)
LOSE
as in "poo's"
LOSE
LOSE
LOSE
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/09/1639212&mode=thread
Make sure you protect your own ass. And don't do anything stupid.
I just went through the NSERC process for a PGS-D (PhD) scholarship and I was made aware of the different types of NSERC applications. First of all are you undergraduate or graduate? Do you work with a company as well? Was this developed as part of a thesis? Were you funded through some other source?
If you are a graduate with a typical NSERC then you are entitled to the rights of your software. However, the University can publish and distribute the software (not usually code) as they see fit. If you have another funding source (internal? dept? faculty? provincial?) then you may loose the right but not because of nserc. Some jokers say get a lawyer etc.... ya right easier said than done considering you are likely a poor sap. You are better off contacting your student union and getting your graduate student association involved. Get someone with a big mouth that will threaten to go on TV about it. Also go to the heads of department and talk about it. What does your supervisor say? Are you in a lab? It is odd that you post this in the end of the first semester if you were undergrad so I'd say you are graduate. Good luck.
Did you sign any contracts with them beforehand concerning IP? And if you didn't sign any contracts, did they inform you of your IP rights before you started to undertake the project? Did you use university resources (e.g., use school computers, talk to professors during working hours, etc.) while doing the project? Even if you were paid through an award and not directly, they can probably claim ownership if any part of the university was involved in its creation.
First and foremost IANAL (I cannot stress this enough!!!) My anecdotal evidence would suggest that (depending on how you answer these questions) you might be obliged to share ownership of the IP with the university. I say this because I am a university student who interned at a company. The internship was based on a school project and extended it. The company wanted to file a patent over it, and I think in the end the university and the company were both considered owners of the property (I was not involved in the legal proceedings so I really don't know much more than this). Other than having my name on the patent application, I probably won't get any other compensation :-p
As a side note, unless you're a professor, I don't see how the argument, "but the professors get to keep their IP" would apply.
Most companies (and I work contract) will have you sign something that, in effect, does the same thing, no matter if the intellectual property is software programming, technical writing or whatever. They may also, as a permanent employee, have you sign a non-compete clause to keep you from jumping over to a rival and transfer your current knowledge of the competitor for x number of years. You can either sign and get the job, try to negotiate and then choose or don't sign and walk. If you're really torn, it would not a bad idea to actually sit down with a contract lawyer and make sure you know exactly which rights you're about to sign away.
It's got to be a lot harder on software engineers. Because it's natural that you'd want to use you knowledge to create a similar program, either for another client or an improved version to sell commercially. And if you're in a particular industry, it would be hard not to come up with a similar program. The web pages and content I create, for example, are not going to be directly related--if I were to decide to write a novel. (The web material I create is not an issue as I'm normally using their template(s)/content server.) It's not like I'm freelancing a wholly-created web site only to have them decide to cut me out and take over maintenance. This can be done, but you want to make sure it's clear in the contract what the package includes, such as maintenance, copyright and that you're properly compensated.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
You must have signed something when you started the job... either for the University or for the company/agency you're working for that is under contract to the university. You should read it... as it's quite likely binding. If it states that they own the rights to whatever you produce while employed by them... it's _quite_ likely to hold up should it come to that.
This is somewhat like asking "Can I tell my wife to take a hike and give her nothing?" after you've been married for 45 years. The answer is more than likely "no." You should have known what you were getting into at the outset... after doing all the work subject to an employment contract isn't the best time to ask what your rights are or try to negotiate or open-source something. You can ask, but if they say no, that's pretty much the end of it. Unless you decide to say "screw it" and then steal or open-source the code... which could open you to criminal and civil liabilities.
My sister 100% owns the copyright to the depressing poetry that she wrote in high school. Big deal.
Your association with the university may inherently make your software more valuable. If I were you, I'd hold back on some key features, pimp your software as much as possible, then leave the university and write the good stuff.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
If the terms of research employment say they (the University) own the rights, then you maybe contractually obligated. My university had section in their policies that made them part owner of any intellectual property generated with university funding (which conceivably could include use of their equipment).
There is also the Work for Hire exception(17 U.S.C. sec 101) which states, "(1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire."
IANAL
Simply have stated in the contract areas of development or interest which will not be covered under the contract. Any time I have to sign something like this for work I exclude everything I can think of that might be of value to me personally. Since I assume you are not being hired primarily as a developer this should not be a problem. If you are being hired as a developer you have a lot less wiggle room.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
First and foremost, like all the other posts here, I'll tell you that you should not pursue legal advice from blogs like Slashdot. Even if people here claim to be lawyers, they likely are not, and even if they actually are, you are NOT being given legal advice (in the best case, you're getting their hasty first impressions).
This should be modded up, best advice yet!
Since you were paid by the NSERC and the their goal is "The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) will help make Canada a country of discoverers and innovators for the benefit of all Canadians.", and are apparently part of a University program, it would seem that releasing your software as open source would be something to consider. Publish your work in accredited journals that was completed with the help of the software. This will get you more notoriety and respect among your peers than keeping it for yourself.
Of course, this is coming from an Anonymous Coward...
Never trust the legal advice from counsel representing the opposite side. You should probably consult your *own* IP lawyer. If you haven't signed anything yet, you might still have some negotiation leverage (supposedly).
Also, if the only right you want to keep is the right to keep working on your own software (after that research is over), try to find a lawyer who is for open source, and see if open source could still get you that grant money -- but protect you -- if for some reason -- the University decided to take that entire project away from you. Open source is a great protection mechanism for core developers. I know it was for me (when I was working for a private company). The worst part might be that you lose the name of your project, but if that happens and even if you relaunch a rival project elsewhere, all the community and all the potential clients will simply follow whoever the original developers were to the new project.
That being said, do consult a lawyer to make him look at your specific situation. And talk to the actual faculty sponsoring the research, if they're high enough on the totem pole, they might be able to successfully pressure their legal department to give you a specific written exemption.
You Win. Unless they said your patent rights are assigned to them, you win. Simple.
These are all very good questions, but you should not be asking Slashdot, you should be asking your attorney. Not having one is no excuse. For something like this, with the ramifications being as big (and permanent) as they are, you need to get one.
He should get an attorney, but there's nothing wrong with asking Slashdot first. A good lawyer will happily charge you $250 an hour or more to teach you about very basic stuff, but that's a waste of money and time.
If somebody's charging you $4 a minute, it makes sense go in prepared. And how do you get prepared? Reading about the fundamentals, getting advice from people with similar experiences, making lists of questions to ask, figuring out what to tell the lawyer, and talking about your concerns with peers. And where can he do all of that? Right here. And as a bonus, a bunch of people who will be able to use the knowledge one day will get it for free.
Can anyone name any other occupation where people have such an exaggerated feeling of ownership over what they produce?
Even if you think you own this software, if it's a good idea, people will copy it, or steal the design, and never pay you a dime.
Do it. Do a great job. When the time is right, move on to the next great thing.
Canadian law is very different from US, particularly around work-for-hire and you really need to talk with a local legal-aid office or lawyer.
You can sign or not sign anything. If you don't like what it says then don't sign it.
Even if it turns out to be unenforceable it would still be your burden to convince a judge of that if they decide to sue you.
Isn't it a bit overkill for a university to keep its own legal department? What possible use could that have?
DISCLAIMER: By reading this post you agree to Great Grandparent post.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I am not a lawyer - you should always consult a lawyer in good standing in your jurisdiction for legal advice and legal services. The following is not legal advice.
In America, IP rights are pretty much freely assignable by contract. Meaning as long as you're not doing anything that implicates 'national security' etc., the contract will likely be enforced in a court of law. As far as Canada goes, no idea.
As far as patents go - no matter what you sign away, you'd still get to be the listed INVENTOR on the patent... BUT it's perfectly legal to assign the patent ownership / enforcement rights over to someone else - even before the invention is invented. So, no matter what the contract says with respect to patents, you'd get some recognition as one of the inventors - you'd just likely have signed away the 'money' part of the patent.
You REALLY should talk to an attorney - get the contract the school wants you to sign and take the contract to the attorney. You'll get so much better help with the contract.
I am not a lawyer. However, I am a graduate student at a major university. I went and asked the university's IP lawyer at the University that I work for about this issue.
He told me that for anything I produce as a student, including software, I retain copyright. My question was specifically in the context of software I produce as part of my dissertation. The university asks to be involved in any patents, but leaves copyright to the students / researchers involved. Technically, I'm told this is a legal grey area, so most universities explictly assign any copyright claims they have to students & professors.
However, if you were employed explicitly as a programmer -- i.e. it is part of your job description / job duties in the official call that you were hired under -- then the programming is work-for-hire, and the university owns copyright. This primarily applies to full-time programmers hired by the university, and part-time technical staff. My university gives permission for people to apply open-source BSD-like licences to software that is developed for hire, but the university retains the official copyright.
That said, I agree that you should ask a lawyer. However, you are probably able to ask one of the university's lawyers in this area, as it is his job to know such answers.
GAFL
Question is who writes your paycheck and so your W-2? If the university obtained the research grant and paying you from it, I think the university may require such contracts. Not sure why professors could own rights but that is a different contract, and does not have to match yours. But be sure to get proper legal advice if you are concerned. Personally I believe handing over the work to the university is ok, but it is probably not ok to hand over the IP rights to your professor. Then again, I believe the university gets to decide it as well because the award of research grant is typically based on the talent of the faculty and not based on research students.
The last 3 jobs I've had, HR has sent me a pile of papers to sign when I started. Among the pile were papers for non-compete and giving up my right to software I have written.
All I did was forget to turn them in. All three times no one said a word.
Another option is what my friend did with a very large company, redline and initial things you will not agree to and then sign it. Hand it in. He said that his HR never even looked at it.
Of course keep a copy of anything you do sign and turn in.
I had a NSERC grant for my PhD work and faced a similar set of issues with some of the software.
You may find that University is fine to allow you to open source your software under a license that allows you, and others, to use it later. This may not be exactly what you want as it gives many people certain rights to the software but you might find it is a happy compromise that does not involve you hiring lawyers.
Some relevant factors to keep in mind ... who owns the copyright is probably not what you care about because that has less bearing on who is allowed to use/sell the software. If you used any university equipment, computers, labs, networks etc to write the software - they many have some ownership of it regardless of if you were paid my NSERC or not.
Similar situation, my solution:
1. Wrote a non-trivial GPLed library of functions that would be useful to the SSHRC project, but not specifically for it, nor paid by the university for it.
2. Based research-related code based on the library, with full knowledge of the PI.
3. Profit.
Also #25970817 is wise, as this is an issue in Canada.
I paid for that code you wrote it should actually belong to
the public not you or the university.
Got Code?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You've already been told to get a lawyer so we're done with the legal advice. Some of these folks might be lawyers, but they're not your lawyer so when you need legal advice, get one. He'll tell you to negotiate, though, and whatever you agree to get it in writing.
Now let's talk about the ethical issues. The ethical issue is that a deal is a deal is a deal. Know your deal, make sure the other side knows the deal, and stick to your deal even if you don't like it later. That's ethics.
Now for fun let's discuss the moral implications of your school demanding ownership of your output, which is paid for by somebody else. Dude, that sucks. That doesn't sound like somebody who would stick to their end of the deal. So get a lawyer, negotiate hard and get your deal in writing - or make a deal with somebody else instead.
That was easy. NEXT!
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The word "fail" is not punctuation. Let's at least pretend to be adults here, please. Your otherwise valid points lose credibility with that kind of juvenile banter.
I am not familiar with Canadian law, but in the US if you are paid by an entity and create any type of intellectual property then the IP rights are owned by the entity paying you. It's called work-for-hire.
Now this can automatic transfer can be changed via contract, which is what likely happened with your professors. Also if the funds are coming from a grant the terms of the grant can also control how IP rights are assigned. But you and the person being paid for the work do not really have any rights to the IP unless they are offered to you.
Depends on what you want. If you want to make sure that the University doesn't charge people for the software, and that further research is possible in an unencumbered fashion, you can always just publish it. In most jurisdictions, publication would preclude patenting anything. If, on the other hand, you want to own the IP and collect royalties, you have two options: (1) negotiate with the University for a portion of the royalties -- most tech transfer offices are willing to give something to have the inventor on board, since the software is worth less without the inventor around to help exploit the invention; or (2) assert that it wasn't a product of your employment, but was in fact a product of your efforts as a student. Since students often pay tuition (rather than collect income), you might have a chance to prevail in an argument about whether it was a work for hire or not. But honestly, software IP is worth less and less these days. If you really want to get rich from your invention, start a company that exploits it. Your company will have to do very well before it would be worth the University's lawyer's time to go after you.
Being someone who programs for a company I can tell you ONLY if you program the software on your OWN free time and NOT using company computers can you retain rights without a hassle. Anything programmed on company time and or using company material you might as well be saying "here ya go"...
However, I was applied for a job at radio shack many many years ago and in their clause was something to the effect that if I built anything electronic on my time or theirs, whatever i built belonged to them.
Read the fine print = ask a lawyer!
Legal right isn't what wins in the US judicial system. The ability to afford to argue your case is.
If you're lucky, the moment you challenge them, they don't care enough to pay the cost of defending their case and they'll back down.
If you're unlucky, they'll see it as precedent setting and be determined to do whatever it takes to beat you so they can keep on profiting from all of the other software that's developed. At that point, all they need to do is keep you tied up in appeals until you can't afford to keep paying the lawyer to press your side. For a typical research student, my guess is that's around the second hour. What's worse, they likely know that too, know it won't take much to beat you and so are even more likely to fight on principle because they know your breaking point comes cheaply for them.
But, honestly, at the end of the day: Let it go.
You've probably got about 40 more years of writing code. You're going to write a vast number of programs. Most of those are going to be signed away to employers too. In the scheme of things, unless this is something truly amazing that you're convinced will make you rich, it's most likely something pretty trivial.
If it'll make you that rich, cling to the rights, abandon academia, make your millions, donate a new library, have them grant you whatever piece of paper you abandonned. If it's not going to make you rich, is it worth jeopardising what you've been working on. Moreso, is it worth pissing off the department over - as they're the ones who'll be writing your references for this chunk of time. As I said, most likely, if you take a step back, it's pretty trivial - let it go.
Whoever writes the check owns the work as a work-for-hire.
Without negotiating a contract that is the legal default.
If the University is paid the grant, and you are paid by the University then you work for the University (how they budget to pay you has no direct bearing on ip rights). If you are being paid directly via the grant then the ownership rights may go to that organization, or you may retain the rights depending on their terms.
Any agreements with faculty regarding code they develop has absolutely nothing to do with your situation. They have a contract which explicitly assigns rights to them.
The obvious answer to your question is to ask a lawyer familiar with current Canadian IP law. But perhaps more to the point, given that the software is for academic research and NSERC-funded, why isn't it being released as free software anyway? The reasons boil down to money, and are unconscionable. Whatever the legal merits, most if not all Universities are run much more like sleazy businesses than like research/educational institutions.
Don't code to the best of your abilities. Don't make everything great. Just make it work. Don't throw in any ideas you may want to keep for yourself. If you figure out a really great way to do something that can be done in a much longer cumbersome way, submit the crappy way of doing it. Keep the better way to yourself for future projects. If you don't submit the code to them, there is no way for them to know if you thought of it while on their clock or after the job was over. You can still code what they want while keeping the good ideas for yourself. Don't invent on their behalf if they aren't going to let you keep what you invent.
Wow, you must have really valued what you created -- too bad you came to a place that encourages you to give it away freely. What's that? You were already paid for it? Too late. Sometimes learning can be expensive. Forgetting or not reading your employment contract even more so. Save your dollars, starve a lawyer and keep it as float money for when you want to independently produce your next M0n4 L1s4. Study your source well before leaving the building for the last time as walking out the door with it could be career limiting.
See 17 USC sec. 210(a) & (b); as noted works for hire are automatically considered owned & authored by the employer, unless expressly agreed otherwise.
NSERC's web USRA web page says:
Who owns the rights to intellectual property from research?
NSERC does not retain or claim any ownership of, or exploitation rights to, the intellectual property resulting from your NSERC funding. However, since NSERC's role includes promoting the use of knowledge to build a strong national economy and improving the quality of life of Canadians, every effort should be made to have the results of NSERC-funded research exploited in Canada, for the benefit of Canadians. You are encouraged to discuss intellectual property rights with all parties and organizations involved in the research.
My read: if the University decides to keep the IP, they can. In fact elsewhere, the Industrial USRA documentation explicitly gives the employing company the IP.
From what you said, I understand that your University's policy depends on if you were acting as an employee or as a student. So, what were you? Did they/will they pay you as a T4 (withheld tax) or a T4A (no withholding). If they payed you with a T4A, they were claiming you were a student, not an employee.
fwiw, I hire my USRAs as T4A
Get a lawyer. I AM a lawyer, and as such, I can confidently say that only a lawyer is qualified to answer your question. At that, not just any lawyer: either one who has dealt with similar issues before, or one who can and will devote the time to read your employment contract (and other relevant documents) and research the statutes and regulations (and possibly case law) pertinent to your issue.
Since you're a student (and thus, probably poor), your best bets are your local Bar chapter and your local law school copyright professor. Local Bar organizations tend to have a program in which the Bar matches up potential clients with willing attorneys. You might get lucky and find someone (competent - make sure they have a more than passing familiarity with the Copyright Code) who is willing to work for you on the cheap. Alternatively, you might get lucky and find a law professor who finds your question interesting.
If you can't find a lawyer who will spend the time to answer your question, you'll want to read the law, i.e. the Copyright Code, 17 United States Code. Start with sections 101 and 201, definitions and ownership, respectively. But your question also requires an understanding of whether you are an employee, whose employee you are, the law and regulations surrounding your grant, the university's own policies, your "employment" contract, and whatever contractual papers relate to your grant (whether signed by you or the university). We, the Slashdot polity, CAN NOT make an informed decision regarding your question, because we do not have access to several of these sets of documents. Get a lawyer, or be prepared to guess. You are not qualified to read your contract because lawyers use words you know to mean things that you (1) do not expect and (2) would be unlikely to understand without some education in the law.
If you ARE the university's employee, and none of the related contracts, laws, regulations, etc., supercede copyright law on this question, then the university's lawyers are probably right. But please don't take my word for it, or the word of anyone else on this forum. Get a lawyer!
When I sold my business, the rights to the software went with it. The software was more or less incidental to what was sold, and I later regretted selling the rights.
So what I'll do next time is GPL it _before_ selling the rights.
You could maybe keep your software. But will you be walking out with whatever higher achievement you are going for?
Key idea here being: Play Nice.
I record my sleeptalking
IANAL but I've certainly paid a lot of money to a few of them so I have some experience in this area. You don't say explicitly but I'm going to assume you are in the USA.
Unless you have an explicit contract that states who owns the rights to any code you produce than the whole issue comes down to a determination as to whether the effort falls under "Work for Hire". By default the author owns all copy rights to any work produced. The exception (when there is not an explicit contract for rights in place), in the USA, occurs when a) you are a W-2 employee (1099 and contractors don't count) and b) the work falls directly under the efforts that you are being paid as part of your employment.
The odds are, if you were being paid as an employee under a W-2 where the employer withholds taxes, that your efforts are considered a work for hire since it appears that the code in question was developed to support the research that is the purpose of your employment.
If you are not a W2 employee (doesn't matter if its the Uni or another agency paying you - its the W2 that counts as another agency owning the rights probably assigns them to the Uni as part of their contract) then you own the rights unless there is a contract with you that states otherwise.
Now - you may find yourself rapidly unemployed (as I have been) once you point this fact out to the Uni who will then make continuation of your relationship with them dependent on you signing away said rights. In my case it was actually explicitly excluded from my employment when I signed on because it was based on my prior work so I declined to sign away my rights. You may not be in a position to do so...
Good luck.
IANAL, but IAALS
Here it sounds like you are the employee, and the University is your employer. (You are not a faculty member; they have different rights to their work product.)
You said you 'weren't hired directly'... I doubt this means what you hope. I'd guess that the NESRC paid the University, who in turn paid you. Look at your checks: if they are issued by the University, you're their employee.
It sounds as if you've been working on University grounds, using University equipment and resources, and getting paid by the University to write software, and you've finished the task. Writing the software was your main duty as an employee.
From what you've said, I believe you will NOT be able to properly claim IP rights to this software.
Personally, in this situation, I'd actually grab a copy of any contract, call NYCL's office, explain the situation, and ask for a quote. His contributions on here have shown me that he probably knows enough to give you the *right* answer, and in a very minimal amount of time. You might even get the Slashdot referral bonus.
....But that's just me, and this is Slashdot.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
And this is SOME way relevant to what parent p osted? Oh, right, it's not - just karma piggybacking. BTW, your signature is truncated - not going to convince a lot of people to email you that way ;)
Would you have written that software without being employed in your current situation? Have you used University software? Have you gotten help from professors and other students?
My point is this: Often students think that they have done something completely by themselves, but the university is paying you and providing you with a creative environment to develop. Most companies will not do that... and they will still take your software you write at home on their laptop.
I see lot of posts with "get an attorney" but you didn't even explain your situation ... ok, you wrote a piece of research software in the context of your research project. Why do you want exclusivity here?
1 - do you think you'll not be quoted in publications?
2 - were you on coke and do you think you cannot duplicate the results of your coding for a private company?
3 - are you American?
It will likely come down to whether you were/are an employee or a contractor. If you are an employee, the starting point is that the intellectual property in the 'creation' belongs to your employer. If you are a contractor, it belongs to you, the contractor. Sometimes words like "hired by" or "working for" lead to confusion because they do not accurately describe the relationship. Instead, for the answer, look carefully at how your relationship was formed AND how it is managed day to day.
I've run into a number of bad contracts and have been unable to afford a lawyer, and was willing to accept pretty much anything just to get working again. All of the flaws you mention are things that have come back to bite me in the ass (well, except for the asking slashdot part).
I've learned that keeping any rights to commercially developed software is unlikely unless you have some kind of weight in the business community. Learning what that really means sucks hard, and that's why I believe that Free Software is ultimately better -- it's not produced in software sweatshops, where the true genius will never get compensated, either in ego, or in money for the full value of their work. Of course, that's why I no longer work in IT. There's plenty of money someplace else, and you'll be treated like a person and not some code creating machine.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
codes and modify them until you get them what you need to do. Now, since you started with GPL, then entire project is GPL. It doesn't matter what the university or company states they owned. GPL overrules...always as previous court cases have shown. DOn't let these anal clowns on slashdot scare you.
Your rights and the licensing options of the software you write are valid concerns. However, these concerns should be addressed before you write even a single line of code. It's just a bad strategy to write the code and then try to sort out who it belongs to.
I realize this doesn't help the current situation, but that situation may or may not be salvageable. It's a better plan to go forward resolving to solidify your stance and awareness of who your work belongs to before you do the work.
I think The Simpsons episode covered this when the kids collectively bought Radioactive Man.
If you're in the Stallman camp then stop reading now, because your rights (and your freedom) are more important than anything. If you've read this far, then you're asking the wrong question. If you've written software as part of some university research project, then you need to ask the question: is making a fuss about this worth my time and effort? Unless you're working on the next Google, the answer is probably going to be "no". If you're a pragmatist, you're probably net better of writing it off as a learning experience and moving onto something else. University research projects almost always amount to nothing.
And put these lawyers out of work. Its all or nothing dude. Or your software could forever be haunted by the threat of pending litigation. The one with the most money wins and that will NEVER be you.
Public Domain, dude. Public Domain.
Only in America people replace common sense with lawyers.
Some Universities Have Lawyers that will give you free legal advice. Look into it. Mine does. It is very helpful.
It's not clear how exactly your situation came about, but it sounds like you finally got around to reading your contract and panicked. "DON'T PANIC!". Most schools are not all that black and white, and in my experience, unlike companies, they are very flexible with IP.
For example, universities realize most cool ideas come from research students. Technically, they have all the rights, but it doesn't serve them well to just hoard it. They would rather license the IP back to the student in exclusive, gratis terms, so they can continue to develop it, hoping to get a cut of any commercialization. They will not claim credit for the work, nor they will license it to some third party, cutting you out. They generally try to look out for the interest of the inventors (ie. you!).
Seriously, don't worry about your school screwing you over. Talk to the Univeristy's IP office, tell them you may want to commercialize it, and they'll be more than happy to work out some way for you to do so.
(This is how it worked in large, well known univerisities I've dealt with. I can't vouch for tiny schools with little or no IP experience)
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
Wolfram, however, had other ideas.
There was a protracted, expensive legal battle, in which Wolfram argued that -- despite the overt cultural backdrop of sharing knowledge -- since he didn't expressly sign his rights away, it was all his, and Caltech could go pound salt. It ended up with Wolfram resigning from the physics department and taking all his intellectual "property" rights with him.
And that's why, to this day, it costs $2500 to buy a copy of Mathematica. And also why that clause is in your contract with the University.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
This is a legal question about IP rights, not really a software question at all. If you are truly concerned, I recommend speaking with a lawyer about the contracts they require you to sign, their enforceability and what the law is outside contracts.
As a programmer-turned-lawyer, I'd definitely speak with a lawyer about this who specializes in IP law. That is their job to know, not merely their hobby they aren't trained in.
The most obvious answer is to get a lawyer. Of course, as pointed out by many other slashdotters, you're probably not in a financial situation to get a fully qualified lawyer charging you hundreds (or thousands) an hour. Well, depending on your situation there might be alternatives:
- Find a free legal advice service in your jurisdiction. Since you might be in Canada this may help: http://www.lslap.bc.ca/main/ You should be able to find similar stuff with a simple search - I found that one with a trivial google search.
- See if you can find a law student (not necessarily on campus, could be friends family, whatever) and talk to him/her personally. Might not help you solve the whole problem, but it's more reliable than asking slashdot for pointers.
- If your university has a law department (that teaches law, not the one which handles legal stuff), go and ask some professors about it. You're probably looking for those who teach contract and IP law.
At any rate, don't listen to whatever you see on slashdot. People here like to think they're experts in law, where in reality they really know sht. And unless you're prepared to spends lots of time (weeks, months if not years) learning the basics about law, the legal system, etc, it's generally a bad idea to learn the stuff by yourself, since minor details you may not have noticed can change everything, and often there would not be any black and white answers to a difficult problem, so the problem could be best solved with a bit of social/political tact than reference to legal rights/actions.
If in doubt, use your common sense (but not your geeky-common-sense). Good luck!
As for credentials, IANAL, and I'm studying law in HK and generally failing my courses :)
PS: The ask slashdot question looks spookishly like those exam questions I might have had in my law courses...
Don't quote me on this.
It sounds like adults are required to use language rigidly, express no emotion, and generally not have very much fun.
How about we pretend to be rational instead?
Look at what you signed (or have to sign) for you to work there. If there is nothing, then they can't claim that you were informed of this and agreed to it as terms of your employment. Remember, a contract is something that BOTH parties agree on.
If they only paid (pay for) part of your salary, then it is arguable that they don't/can't own the entirety of the program. They'll have to argue with whoever else is paying your salary to see who gets what. I'm certain that NSERC will have an opinion on this.
But, as far as I know, it's not standard, when it comes to faculty, for the University to claim all (or any?) rights to what the "employee" produces. I don't know about students though. BUT, you can claim hypocrisy on there part if there is such a discontinuity between who gets what rights. As in, you were paid to do research and so what your supervisor. Why does (s)he get to hold on to IP and you don't? Isn't that a kind of Academic dishonesty? etc.
As for, what do you do. It's really up to you. Do you need this feather in your cap? Or is it a want that is not enough to push aside your feelings about giving up this IP? This is a personal decision that /. nor anywhere/anyone else can make for you.
So, stop trying to get others to make this decision for you. Stop, think about it, weigh the pros and cons and make it yourself. Then live with the consequences. It's called life. If you start doing it now, it'll make it a lot easier when you enter the real world.
That's crazy talk. For one, bring up your contention with the University and they will find another researcher or not bother altogether. You are not special - the funding is. Otherwise, you would research with your own money. Think about it. If you had money to invest in research, would you let the asshole that did the research keep it? Yeah right. Until you spend your own money, the institution funding the research owns the research. Doesn't that make sense? Do you think you research for free and keep the glory?
Lord forgive you for working and getting paid, and now OMG you might have to continue to work to get paid.
Go fuck an egg.
it has no difference what your title was...only where the money came from and what you signed in the beginning. Research student or not...your work is owned by those that paid for it.
If you produce the work by default, unless it already states they get the copyrights, you get to keep the copyrights, no matter what they pay you for.
You see, they still get the program they paid for. So why do they want the copyrights too for free?
When you buy MS Office, you don't get the copyrights, despite you having PAID for the software. Why? Because although you've paid for the software, you didn't ask and pay for the copyrights.
Same deal here.
Your advice is wrong.
Big time.
Wrong.
Unless they asked for copyright ownership in the employment contract, they DO NOT OWN copyright on your work. They still get to use the work and THAT is what they paid for. Just like you buying MS Office doesn't give you the copyrights, even though that is YOUR money you gave for it (and a lot too).
They can ask.
They can have it in the contract already signed.
Absent either, the poster gets to keep copyrights.
The University can ask for it, doesn't have to be given. The University can PAY for the copyrights. But if they are *now* asking for the copyrights, you can say no.
I can't go to MS and demand the copyrights to MS Office just because I spent £600 for it and expect them to just give them over.
"Are they allowed to completely strip my rights to the software?"
They should have, i.e. if I pay someone to write software for me, even if it is for research, I'd be quite angry if they turned around claiming the IP to it.
I work at an university, and the understanding here is that I can open source any software I write as long as maintaining and supporting it does not lead to any increased workload. However, if I try to sell or profit from it, then the case is different (as it would be like getting double pay.)
Norwegian law may differ from other law though.
Coming to Slashdot for a legal answer to a legal question.
Do you think a "you must be new here" comment is worthy?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
SOMEONE finally said it.
If the contract DOESN'T say "we get the copyrights" they don't get the copyrights.
It doesn't matter a flying fuck whether they paid you to code. You coded. They got the software. THEY DIDN'T GET THE COPYRIGHTS.
Unless they had already asked.
If they are asking now, then they fucked up.
WRONG.
If it is your 'job' to produce such items, they are completely owned by the person PAYING for their creation.
A good example is a TV cameraman, believe it or not he does now own the copyright to the pictures coming out of his camera if he was contracted to operate the camera.
The question here is simply is it the job of the person involved to produce the items/ideas/whatever in question.
If say your job was to wash cars, and while there you invented quantum computing, your employer would not own that UNLESS they had an additional IP contract with you, as it was not your job to do that (they could however fire you for spending work time doing something other than your job ;))
There are basic terms of employment that are assumed - not everything has to be specifically contracted, otherwise employment contracts would be insanely long and complex.
Yes it's normal. It happens at all universities.
Notice that is about software, and starting at zero is considered optimal .
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
Decide what it is you want honor, control, ability to freely re-use etc. and what it applies to before going any further.
Then I'd discuss it with whoever is commissioning you. My wild guess is that the public-funded project will come with some sort of "this can't be kept out of the public domain (except...)" but that's probably it.
Many university IP contracts specifically allow researchers to release their software under free-software licenses. If his does, and if that were his intent, then it wouldn't be necessary to resolve the question of whether they can claim any rights, since the free-software license would be valid either way.
If, on the other hand, his intent is to make a proprietary commercial software product out of it, and avoid them getting a cut of the royalties, then he would be more interested in the specifics of IP ownership.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Universities have historically existed for a combination of research and intellectual (not career-oriented) education. Places like Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, University of Paris, etc., were all founded as centers of scholarship, primarily to support professors doing research, and students learning from them as something like an apprenticeship (so they could someday be researchers as well).
A vocational-training model in which students attend post-secondary education to gain skills useful in career employment is much more recent, and most top universities have not really switched to it, except sometimes in their advertising materials when needed to mollify parents. In short, research universities were not founded, and are not currently judged, on their education, but rather on their research output. The fact that students can also attend them is sort of secondary, often pretty openly so, as the students take many classes from a parallel system of lecturers, not from the top researchers.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It really is black and white, and you aren't being stripped of anything.
Either you're doing freelance work, in which case you retain copyrights, or you're doing a work for hire, in which case the patron owns the copyright, (since they commissioned the work, are paying for it, and you're merely writing it on their behalf, and so you never had any rights to it to begin with).
It works that way in every other field involving creative work, software is no different.
That's one of the biggest problems with Slashdot these days: Too many people pretending to be rational rather than actually being so.
Something that worked well for me in similar situations was this:
Request that the software is released under an open license (in my case, the BSD license), a request that an academic organisation is unlikely to refuse. There is no need to actually give anyone else a copy of the source. When you leave the university, you have full rights as bestowed by the license even if the copyright on the source belongs to "Regents of the University of California", or whoever. Problem solved.
Having said that, if your software is anything like typical academic software (my own included) then the source code will be dreadful and worth next to nothing. It is the ideas encoded in the code that are valuable - and the ownership of those is a whole other argument.
I've been in almost exactly the same position as you are now. Fortunately the university that I was working at had a more flexible approach to the situation. Ownership of inventions was shared. Either the university or the inventor could exploit the idea and pay royalties to the other. In reality if the invention was like most inventions (of no real worth) they would generally consider just signing the rights over to you.
It's probably worth talking to them about something like shared rights. I don't suppose you will have much luck though. In my experience the person paying you will claim everything you do.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
He's probably a C programmer.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
.... Richard Stallman.
1. Ask a lawyer about who owns the rights.
2. If the university does own rights
a. You can often negotiate redistribution/
licensing. I have negotiated GPL licensing/
redistribution for my main work projects
which are now two source forge projects.
b. If the university doesn't see that they'll
gain from owning the IP, you may be able
to negotiate a transfer of licensing.
If you are a undergraduate student they will not be able to enforce it. If you are post graduate it is a diffrent issue.
The university may or may not have certain rights. Whether you agree or not doesn't matter, they have whatever rights they have and they don't have whatever rights they don't have. There is no way they can force you to sign over any rights. Either they have these rights, then they don't need you to sign them over. Or they don't have the rights, then you are under no obligation to sign them over. (BTW I was told that in US law, you can't sign over copyrights that don't exist yet. Like the copyright for a book that you are going to write, or the copyright that you are going to develop. For the simple reason that the copyright doesn't exist. The signing over must happen when the copyright actually exists).
If this SW has commercial potential, then enter into a joint participation(Joint Venture or JV Agreement) agreement with the University(U) so that each get 50% of the commercial revenue. This might entail the U making a deal with a SW corp in that area and you providing source and notes to allow them to maintain the product. Usually the home College will get a site licence, and the SW corp will want to sell the product to industry and might give site licences to other colleges to breed a bunch of users who will create industrial demand. As for release as a free product under a BSD that would probably reduce the apparent value of the product to the SW corp, so take that into account. The legal dept at the U will be under a broad mandate to profit the U and not you, so they may give you biased advice. One way, as said by others, is to get a law prof to get some of his students to take it on as a project, for free, as a training exercise if you cannot really afford a lawyer on your meager stipend
Having been through this, there are three likely outcomes in decreasing probability.
Assuming the latter greatness, in my experience the likelihood of the university patenting your algorithm is vanishingly small. But if they do, great! You are a young researcher with a patent. Chances are the Univeristy will profit share ( in theory at least. At one institution the patent office made just enough money to, you guessed it, fund the patent office ). If they don't, you are a young researcher with a patent. Sounds like graduate school gave your career a boost. Ten years down the line I'd rather have a patent under my name than the software I wrote.
In either case, publish. Publishing is the GPL of the academic community. I have had greater success making my source code GPL when I talked to my principal investigator about supplementary materials for publications than at any other time. If this fails at least you'll know whether the algorithm is patented before publication, if it isn't, you will be able to use the algorithm in the future free and clear. If it is, I'll repeat myself: you are a young researcher with a patent AND a publication.
Seriously. I've not bothered to read EVERY post, but instead of offering some constructive help, why are so many people being an obnoxious jerk?
Someone is reaching out and barely anyone can say anything useful without interjecting some "better than you" attitude or comment. If this poor guy is wasting your time, then don't read it, much less wast any MORE of your time writing such thoughtful and well-worded replies.
Make some friends, read some self-help or something... really.
Why are so many /. readers so frightened of work-for-hire arrangements? Copyright is not a birthright. You do not automatically own the rights to things you create.
You are quite right to recognize and debate the issue. But you start from a point of assuming you should retain those rights. Welcome to employment. Usually, you don't retain the rights to things you're paid to create. That the rules are different for professors is irrelevant.
You have the basic equation right -- the deal is what you agree to -- but you seem to be overlooking WHY people are paid to create software. People pay you to create software because (by doing so) the value accrues to them.
Work-for-hire is neither bad nor unfair.
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
1) What is it that you think you can back down from, given that you started off saying that you already wrote the code as an employee?
2) What their source of funding was for paying you is irrelevant, but what do you mean you were hired "not directly by the university"? The simple question is: WHO IS YOUR EMPLOYER? Did you work for a contracting firm that leased you out to the university? This should be a simple question to answer: look at your W2 when you get it in January.
3) What did you sign?
You said from experience, slashdot is the perfect place to get misinformation on legal matters.
Please detail your experience. What information did you come to slashdot for, and what advice did you get, and how did it burn you?
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hi, The answer lies in the agreements you have already and may sign up to in the future as there is no criminal law governing the ownership of software - save to say that using it without a licence to do so is illegal. Check the contract you have with the university and see if there are any clauses around "produced works" etc. If there is no specific reference to the ownerhip of works produced during your time at the university then be open and honest and find out if there is a policy. If there is a policy, request to have it put into the contract. Hope this helps.
Here in Denmark you sign an agreement handing over all rights to your employer ( normally added in your contract ). Thus, you have no rights and can claim no right of the software, documentation or parts hereof.
Therefore, my advice would be to get legal assistance if you cannot get the clear definition from your employer.
Never buy Sony CDs - they will open up your computer to anyone..
There's no get outs, or wiggles there.
However, you may well find that to be negotiable - it's often a standard term in a contract, as a 'catch all' for 'anything you make as part of your job, is ours'. It's far easier to put that in the contract on day one, than to have to fight in court.
I had a similar term in mine at a previous employer - I was being hired to sysadmin, and there was a term covering intellectual property of stuff produced.
Turns out they didn't actually care that much, because my job _wasn't_ to produce code, and so we agreed to delete that from my contract, and replace it with... well, I can't remember the exact wording, but approximately anything I was specifically asked to write by my employer (and thus was paid for) was theirs, and anything derivative I could release provided I didn't profit from it. Or something like that, anyway. But as my interest was being able to post snippets on websites, and occasionally publish the odd test script, or maybe work on GPL software, that was fine.
"Having written a piece of software as part of my research employment, I now face (and will later face again, with other software I've developed), the issue of intellectual property rights. The legal department stated that if I was paid by the University to produce the software, the University would own all rights to it. This is supposedly black and white, not a gray area. However, I was hired as a research student, not directly by the University, and also via a research award (NSERC).
This comes down to contract work. If you are hired (as a research student) and part of your job is to write software, then any software you write for them belongs to them. It really is that black-and-white. You find this in industry as well as the education market. It's a very standard thing.
I work in central IT at a large university, and any programs or scripts I write for them as part of my job belongs to the university. (Specifically, copyright is assigned to the Regents of the university. If I were to leave, I don't get to take any of that with me.)
When we hire contractors to do programming, it's the same deal. Any programs they write when they are here belong to the university. Kind of sucks for them, since I'm sure they get stuck writing the same set of procedures everywhere they go, but they have to keep re-writing it (not re-use code written for a previous employer) because the code belongs to the person paying the contract.
Furthermore, it turns out that faculty members here, in fact, retain their intellectual rights to any software they write.
Yes, but the faculty's job is to advance the educational mission of the university. They are also paid to do research. And to publish. When a faculty person writes a book, it's their name on the cover, not "University of ___". So yes, if a faculty person writes a program (as part of their research) they maintain the rights to it.
To put things a little closer to your situation, let's say a researcher needed to have a particularly complicated program to analyze something, and the researcher realized it was too far above his/her head. So the researcher turns to a member of the CS faculty, and contracts with them to write the program. Guess who owns the IP rights to the program? The researcher who contracted the work. Even though the person who wrote the program is faculty at the same university, it was contract work, so the person who contracted the work (not who did the work) gets to keep the IP.
(That is, unless they arranged something else in the contract ... as research faculty would probably do anyway. But it made my point.)
In this case, make sure it's a copyright lawyer: the copyright-law definition of "work for hire" is very different from the patent-law version.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
I have worked on both industry and academic projects. If they really want to own and "close source" the code I write, then they have to pay a hell of a lot more than if they just want to open source it. Academia never pays that much, so I always:
1) negotiate for personal ownership or charte blanche open source.
Usually the contract negotiator has no clue and agrees.
If that is not possible then
2) make very liberal use of gpl code in my project after clearing with group leader.
The latter approach is usually very appealing to lower management, i.e. group leaders, since it brings higher productivity and faster results that will be easier to maintain in the future.
I think the first post states the case pretty clearly regarding negotiation - but inherent within that point there are some things to consider:
FIrst off, do you have significant leverage to negotiate? if you back out, how hard would it be for them to replace you and get what they want? Would it set the project back? If you are easily replaceable, then you don't have a lot of leverage to negotiate...
Also, how would leaving the project affect you in other ways? Would you lose valuable experience and contacts? would it make it difficult or impossible for you to do other work for this institution or others (EG would it give you a reputation as being difficult to work with)?
There are more things to consider than there appear to be on the surface.
Also, do you think that if you did do this work and didn't have the rights to it, could it really affect you down the road practically, or is it more of "I don't want to sign rights to my work away because it's my work and that's not right." (which I can totally empathize with, but which you may want to reconsider).....
Finally, is there anybody there who you cabn approach and discuss your concerns with? Maybe you can get rights to use the parts of your work that don't directly compete with or infringe on the compelted project and could get an agreement like that.
Lesson 2: you're already into this deal, too late to renegotiate. If you move on to "professor" status, you'll have justification for why you want rights to all software you develop - then.
IDEAs
1. Setup a LLC and subcontract to the University. That way you get paid with the grant money the school receives.
2. You could also write a password protected subroutine into the code that will deactivate the code unless unlocked by a "paid" password hmmm? (Scraching my head...)
3. Only write the code to meet minimum capability requirements until the project ends, then form a LLC rewrite the code with substantial improvements based on your true skillset abilities and market the software.
4. Do not accept the position and write the code before the University can publish the software.
Let them have the IP rights to the program.
You - just keep its source code.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Try actually reading the law instead of asking a biased bunch of people on a web site. And, if you don't like the conditions, don't take the position.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
What ever rights you currently have to the software can only be given up if you legally sign away your rights to the software. What are your current legal rights in regards to the software.
davecb5620@gmail.com
Even if you aren't represented by a union, chances are that unions that represent campus employees will pay attention to pet causes such as academic freedom. They may even fight for your cause, since it will affect all employees on campus.
If none of the academic employees on your campus are unionized, talk whichever body represents your faculty. They may be very keens to find out that the university is attempting to claim the IP rights of the faculty. Which is what they're doing since funding almost always comes from a faculty member's own grants, as well as funding that the student may bring with them. (All that the university does is print the cheques, and asks other people for the money for those cheques.)
It is probably not worth the time to talk the the university administration about this directly. I've tried to do so on matters that outright violated their own policies and they ignored me outright.
if the answer is yes, go back to the legal department, tell them you want to sell it, and negotiate royalties. the university isn't going to go out and sell it on it's own. universities don't do that sort of thing. they do like other people to do the legwork for them, and to get a cut of the revenues. i'm actually going through exactly this situation right now with my own business, and the best leg up you'll have in these situations is how much development you do on the software outside the university, either on your own time or after leaving your job. improving the software reduces their ownership interest.
if the answer is no, go back to the legal department and ask what sort of open source license they'd find agreeable. if you aren't going to profit from it, the university isn't, either. might as well try to share it with the world.
I've learned that keeping any rights to commercially developed software is unlikely unless you have some kind of weight in the business community.
If you're being paid to develop that software, then that seems fair enough to me.
The trouble is when employers go beyond that. In employment relationships, and only IME of course, a lot of employers' lawyers default to inserting clauses into the employment contract that say the company owns everything you do. Often, there is nothing limiting this to things you do as part of your job, so it includes the blockbuster movie script and novel you wrote in your spare time as well, and certainly programming-related things like any work you'd like to contribute to an OSS project. Obviously this covers the employer unambiguously in the event of any dispute, but screws the employee.
The interesting thing is that, again IME, many employers will accept that this isn't a fair deal and will be willing to adjust the wording to something more balanced, if you challenge the deal before signing. A few won't change their standard contract, but there is such a strong correlation between those I would/wouldn't be comfortable working for and those who are/aren't willing to make such a change that this is now one of my two "acid tests" when interviewing for a programming job. (The other, if anyone is curious, is whether they are willing to show me their code and that code looks respectable. Again, places that decline to do this or where the existing code quality is poor tend to have other weaknesses as well.)
But in any case, that may or may not apply here, and I strongly agree with those who say that if this is in doubt and may become relevant then the OP should get a real lawyer to look at the exact contract being offerred.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
At which point they will say no (for good reason).
The submitter will look for another job, and learn a hard lesson about the asymmetry in the employment market in academia where student researchers are largely interchangeable.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
You aren't having anything stripped away. You only lose what you agree to. If they won't agree to letting you maintain your IP rights, then it's your decision whether or not to accept the grant and subsequent consequences.
2. If you sign this when you obviously (and demonstrably - you posted it here!) thought they intended it to mean you had no ownership, the courts will not look kindly on you turning around and saying you don't believe that.
Are you implying that the University would attempt to use the fact that the author asked about the legality of his IP rights on Slashdot as evidence of bad faith against an argument of contractual vagueness? That on the stand, the attorney would produce several screenshots of this very post, hand them to the defendant, and say, "Well, what about these Slashdot posts?" The jury gasps, "He asked about it on Slashdot? He must have known it was illegal. Guilty, guilty, guilty!"
Trust me, it's very clear that you are not a lawyer. I, however, am a lawyer, and can tell you that you really should not become a lawyer. Or post answers to legal questions on Slashdot.
The researcher is employed to do a specific job. The results of that job belong to the employer, and nothing else. If a company pays you to write a piece of code, or engage in some kind of development, they usually have a bunch of dudes in suits and the god aweful ms-project tracking that everything you do is germain to the task at hand. If you engage in ancillary work that you might think might be helpful, but is not on the plan, you get the shaft.
To bring us back to a higher level. You pay a cleaner to clean your bathroom. If you aren't paying him to clean your garage, you don't the obligation for him or her to do so. If you pay a scientist to go and cure cancer, and, on his own time and dime, that scientist cures aids, so long as the scientist is delivering research per the project plan that you have set out for the cancer, and uses his own time and resources to cure aids, then you don't get that research.
Employment pays for jobs to get done and is not indentured servitude.
This is my sig.
It's work for hire. By ordinary copyright law it's not yours. It's your employer's, unless you negotiate other arrangements. If you're working on the software for money it pretty clearly isn't yours any more than if you design and build a car at a factory. The manufacturer would probably object if you started driving cars off the lot or sold the engineering designs to other companies, right?
The only details that will matter is who you are negotiating with for better terms: the researcher, the university, someone else (e.g., granting agency), or all three. More than likely, it's the researcher, depending upon the contract they have with the university. You *must* find out what that arrangement is. That arrangement sometimes includes automatic perpetual licensing agreements with the university or sharing of royalties for patented inventions, and a variety of other complications even if the researcher "owns the IP" in a general sense. Generally, commercial == greater complication. It depends upon the university. Fortunately, NSERC isn't an issue. They don't lay claim to work done with the research funds.
Most researchers are going to be open to alternatives and will try to facilitate them for students, as long as they get to continue using the software they've paid to have developed. As other's have suggested, getting an agreement to a GPL, BSD, or similar license might be a way to ensure you can continue to do what you want with the code after your work finishes. But you've got to make sure that a researcher has the ability to allow that kind of licensing via their arrangement with the university.
Whatever you do, don't start the negotiations with an indignant attitude about the situation. Get this clear in your head: the rights you say have been stripped you probably did not have in the first place, if you were being paid for the job. You were operating with a misconception if you thought otherwise.
I looked around, and found this bit of information from McMaster University that might help. It describes a number of situations that can apply at a university (e.g., the difference between work for hire and work that students do in courses). It is likely there are many differences across the country, but it should give you some ideas about the usual situation.
Welcome to the harsh world of gainful employment, young researcher!
Suck it up, mate.
You wrote the SW on the company's dime so its theirs. Period.
The academics get breaks because they have unions, representation, papers, track records, old-boy networks you name it. Dont take the fight on because you will never win.
The only advice I can give you is to set all this aside and work with your colleagues to make a great system that is a great success. That goes on your resume, into papers, track records, presentations, conferences and into your old-boy network.
After about 20 years you will be at the top of the sh1tp1le stealing code off your research assistants. Or not. At that stage it will be your choice. Right now it isnt.
The only choice you have is to not take the job.
Listen: I was in the same boat as a youngster. And take it from me you are much better off being a team player and doing things by the book, even if you don't agree with the book.
Im afraid thats life. I recommend you concentrate your efforts on friends, family, booze and fornication so you have some good memories to show for your time on earth.
Seriously. Can we have a minute here to slam vintagepc here. Dude. The contract says if you are getting paid to write code its theirs. Not only is that legal. Its right. For you to stand around whining about the fact that maybe this person or that person is signing the check so that you can get around it is bullshit. If you want to own your code write it on your own time. Every half wit with a grain of talent thinks that they are somehow special and above everyone else. The truth vitagepc is that you are to stupid to read a contract and to vain to see that it applies to you. Done.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
then they do own that work. The software that's part of that research will be considered part of what they own. If they pay you for it you don't have any "rights" to be stripped away. They can waive this clause but they will almost never do so in my experience. Most places I've worked at try to claim they own everything you produce when you work for them. If I was writing software and produced a novel their contract says they own it. In the real world however you might be able to successfully defend against that claim, depending on if the judge in the case wants to enforce the letter of the contract or use common sense. In short, you probably have no choice but to accept that contract if you want the job. YMMV
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
How about we pretend to be rational instead?
How about we pretend to be rockets. Being rational sounds a bit too close to what he said.
While I agree with the majority of you post...you have me completely baffled at your taxpayer comment. What tax system would you propose we use that doesn't 'hurt ourselves'? And with Obama coming into office...I don't think the system in place will be very friendly to "the rich"..who already pay a disproportionate amount of the US tax.
Anyway, please elaborate...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Generally speaking, research grants are not technically awarded to the faculty (or student), but are awarded to the University and distributed from there. This gets around the "I don't technically work for the University" argument.
There are many different IP policies out there. If what is being offered you is really that bad, then go somewhere else. There are a few schools that don't screw over students (any more than they screw over the faculty). You've already noticed that as a student, you are very low on the University food chain, and that in general these rights are vastly expanded as you move up to postdoctoral researcher and professor. It's still not all roses though.
If you're worried about your non-research work, talk to your department. Professors deal with this all the time, and they'll tell you what to do to separate the university supported work from the personal work. It's usually not that hard.
If you really intend to commercialize your research, protect prior research or work in industry while also doing university research, you really should talk with a lawyer.
What if you were to release said project under a FOSS license before the meeting where you are supposed to sign over the rights to it, and then inform the university's legal department of that and how it is now impossible to sign over the exclusive rights to your project to them?
Or get them to agree to a FOSS license?
That is unless you don't want it to be FOSS, but you could still sell a friend a license to it before signing over the rights. Of course you may end up being told "well you'll have to do another project that we do get the exclusive rights to". Go talk to a lawyer.
Well, at our university when I was working on a research project the professor(s) receiving the grant were obliged to turn over a large chunk of the grant to the university. The university then used part of that money to pay the students working on the research project, and I was effectively considered faculty employed by the university. Usually we had to teach a few classes or labs in addition to research work, however we also had the full faculty benefits package as far as health insurance, etc. went plus we got to pay those nice TIAA dues (yippee).
yes you lose and no there is nothing you can do about it. Corporations SUCK ASS (and not the feel good kind either) when it comes to this kind of legal issue. What you take away though is only knowing that you yourself created the software.
You mean that a single word, standing by itself cannot be used to denote punctuation? Bullshit.
Parent is right. Period.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
As someone who has been in exactly this position, you should ask yourself the following question: would you do better selling the software yourself? What is it worth, honestly? If you are learning things that you will take away from the job, it's not a bad arrangement at first. The question is much harder when the software clearly has commercial value. In that case you should push for co-ownership.
If somebody pays you to do work, they should own the work. You seem to assume by default that this is bad, but I don't see the problem here. They are taking on all the risk - you get paid whether they manage to make money on what you make or not. If you would prefer to arrange things differently, then you get to take on the risk - make something yourself, or find investors who you negotiate terms with, and sort out how to make the money yourself. But expecting to have your cake and eat your cake - having somebody else pay you to make things for yourself, thereby eliminating your risk without also giving them a reasonable reward - seems a bit unreasonable.
It also gets incredibly hard to sort out ownership in a team environment, and anything interesting is going to require a team environment. How do you expect to sort out which portions you own versus which belong to your coworkers? Easy: It all belongs to the company paying you. If it doesn't require a team, you should just do it in your spare time, then you don't need to worry about any of this.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
Take a look at the recent Forbes magazine. They did a story on "regular" families (all of whom make in the neighborhood of $250,000 - $500,000 a year or more - very not "regular" frankly) hit by the economic crisis.
In that article there is a chart of who pays what portion of the tax burden. The largest group, who pays a healthy 11-13% (can't remember the specifics) are people making around or below $50,000 a year.
The group paying the largest portion of the taxes (and the most as a percentage of their income) is those guys in the 250K - 500K range. Now, that's a problem I'd like to have - just to get that out of the way.
Next up is the millionaires, the guys making multiple millions a year - they are paying a smaller share of the tax burden than the guys making only a quarter of a million, and are paying a smaller amount as a percentage of both what they make, and how much wealth they control.
That is an unfair system - mostly unfair to the knuckle heads in the 250K-500K range, who are paying for the millionaires' Bentleys and 13th houses.
Why knuckleheads? Because those same guys love to talk about wealthfare moms and public school kids, and how unfair it is that they have to pay for all those "social programs". Cry me a river.
Maybe those knuckleheads should be pisses to hell, that the millionaires - the guys getting the most benefit out of a society that they 250K crowd are mostly paying for - that they don't pay their fair share, and leave the struggling alone, or maybe even, help them out.
To finally answer the question about what tax system doesn't "hurt us" - one that taxes the very wealthy and helps get our public services paid for, to stop them from crumbling - making things like public schools work, a college system that educates, and bridges that don't fall down. FDR style taxes on only the rich, and some relief for the rest of us - economic enabling relief for the people who have a desire - a need - to innovate and get stuff done, but who currently lack the resources to do any of it.
How's that for a tax system that doesn't hurt _us_.
http://www.unfocus.com/
THIS IS NOT A COMPLICATED QUESTION.
Bottom line here is Copyright law. Unless something gets patented - that's a different ballgame.
Specifically, this is a work for hire. If you're paid to create the work, it belongs to them. It's that simple.
Unless you negotiate some very specific clauses in your contract, they own the work and all associated rights.
Copyrights MUST be assigned specifically.
My last three employers all had "we own your software you write at work" so they own the software I wrote.
If they hadn't had that, I would still own my copyrights on my software.
Copyrights MUST be specifically assigned to an owner who is not the author else it stays with the author.
Such a clause is common (very common) for programmers. But since the poster forgot to say what the contract of employment says, we can't say for sure. What we CAN say for sure is that "they own your copyright if you work for them" is wrong. It is ONLY right if the contract of employment says they do.
While I agree with the majority of you post...you have me completely baffled at your taxpayer comment. What tax system would you propose we use that doesn't 'hurt ourselves'?
He's saying that the lower and middle class vote for and generally support tax reforms that would only benefit them if they were considerably richer than they currently are, and actually hurt them at their current income level.
Ask any blue collar democrat or bible-belt small town republican or white-collar pointy-haired-middle-manager middle-class joe average whether he thinks we should scrap progressive tax and switch to a flat tax. The number that think this would be a good idea is shocking, given than it will only reduce the tax load on people wealthier than them, and shift that load onto them.
Either these people are categorically bad at math (which is probably true), have delusions about how wealthy they actually are (everybody thinks they are "upper middle class"), or have unrealistic expecations about how wealthy they will be in the near future).
In truth its probably all of the above.
And with Obama coming into office...I don't think the system in place will be very friendly to "the rich"..who already pay a disproportionate amount of the US tax.
The vote for Obama vs McCain was a lot more than simply picking a tax plan, so we can't and shouldn't really equate voting for Obama with understanding how tax reforms will affect them.
I love how I get modded troll for basically calling someone on their own nonsense.
Proof that Slashdot moderators tend to not have any brains. Smarts, yes, brains and common sense (and possibly reading comprehension) no.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
ok, so youre a student, you have an award from NSERC, so you are in Canada. Copyright law in Canada is pretty clear and dry about ownership if you are paid as part of your employment to create something - your employer owns it. It dosent matter that the award is from NSERC, or that you are a student. The money comes to your university, the cheque is cut from the university, so youre paid by them. Unless youre part of the faculty union, their copyright agreement dosent apply to you, so you are completely out of luck.
Im surprised you havent mentioned a moral rights waiver - its probably in the fine print. You will like that even less I suspect.
And I REALLY don't think it does.
And recently as well there was a case where someone did some programming work for some company and the company forgot to ask for the copyrights. So the company DID NOT GET the copyrights.
Despite it being a work for hire.
Another section requires this.
ALL programmer contracts I've seen said "We own copyright for all your work done for us". Absent that, it is not their copyright. Unless they want to buy it.
Really? I think most people I know that voted against him, and are still wary of him....is due mainly to his perceived US financial asperations. The redistribute the wealth thing, etc. Frankly, I dunno what other issues really to take with Obama...he really didn't say much for anyone to know about his positions on anything else. All I heard was "we can change"...but, I never heard what that was going to be really.
"Ask any blue collar democrat or bible-belt small town republican or white-collar pointy-haired-middle-manager middle-class joe average whether he thinks we should scrap progressive tax and switch to a flat tax. The number that think this would be a good idea is shocking, given than it will only reduce the tax load on people wealthier than them, and shift that load onto them."
I'm not so sure even "I" believe that....I mean, there is just another on this thread saying that his reading shows that the really rich...those making well over $250-$350K, really pay today, in this progressive system, with its loopholes and deductions.....pay very little tax...maybe like 11%? And too..those really rich, they don't get a paycheck and therefore don't pay SS and medicare taxes.
So, would not a FairTAx type consumption tax replacement NOT finally get them? The rich spend a lot more money....so, this type system would/should start to catch more taxation percentage that is lost today. I can't help to think it would also make up a great deal for all the cash only transactions that happen. Drug dealers for instance....they don't do taxes on cash only illegal transactions. But, they do still have to buy bling and stuff.....so, they'd get taxes more than now.
And frankly....from what I read on the FairTax type thing (I'm not rich either)...if the rebates or maybe just non-taxation on necessities like food worked out....it would be a fairer system then what we have now. The ONLY way the current progressive system we sort of have now would start to be fair again..woulc be to cut out EVERY loophole, and every deduction...especially those targeted at maniuplation behavior, but, that's another thread. But seriously, I think I could get behind a progressive system, if all deductions like homes, business, kids, etc...were taken out...and it was ONLY based on income or whatever...no looopholes, no exceptions. I'd go for it. If they did it the strict way, I also imagine they could cut down tax on everyone that way too....but, they way the system is today, it isn't truly progressive, it isn't fair, and I'd surely take the FairTax type plans over it immediately.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Years ago, I helped write part of the copyright/patent policy (I try to avoid the phrase "Intellectual Property," which as far as I know is not recognized in law) for my university, served on the faculty committee making recommendations for disputes, and guided one colleague through a patent owned by the university. You can easily figure out which university I'm at, but it's not really relevant, this was years ago, I think they threw out the part that I wrote (and I don't care), ... Nonetheless, I can make some observations that might help you figure things out.
1. The status of work at a university is very weird, and it's hard to find two people who understand it the same way. The law's concept of work for hire seems clear, but universities accept the notion that they haven't hired all of your work, not even all that you perform during normal working hours (which are never normal at the U). I heard very high administrators say that faculty are faculty all the time, 24x365.25. But we also pretend that our salary only covers 9 months, and we are allowed to take summer jobs in which we make contracts providing our work to other institutions. Point: it's totally unclear.
2. Almost all work under a US government grant is done as a university employee. The feds grant the money to the university. Under the terms of the grant, a principal investigator (PI) has wide authority to tell the university how to spend the money (and almost no accountability for doing it wrong---universities get dinged for statistical estimates of the amount of mistakes made by PIs). Anyone working on the grant is a university employee, paid from "restricted funds."
3. The feds have never to my knowledge claimed ownership of work performed under research grants. In the past, they have explicitly encouraged universities and other corporations to own and exploit patents and copyrights obtained with grant funds. There is a trend toward requiring open sharing of some grant results, but I haven't studied this. It may only apply to data so far, and it probably varies between funding agencies.
4. Universities have good grounds for claiming that work done with their money (a very ambiguous category, as I mentioned in #1) is work for hire, patents and copyrights due to them. They routinely give back the copyrights to creators, on the excuse that these copyrights have to do with publication of research. That's often true, but it is also applied to rather cynically produced textbooks, that appear to be written mainly for plunder (which very few of them actually capture).
5. Universities have a mission to publish research, and they get financially valuable prestige from research associated with them. They tend to avoid obstacles on research publication. I recommend associating software as closely as possible with research articles and reports. Maybe the source code is an appendix. Maybe the journal won't print it, but they'll give the URL reference. Years ago, I think I established a policy that my U would never stand in the way of software being released to the public (GPL, BSD, implicit full license---incorrectly referred to as "public domain"). I don't think this policy was ever violated, I don't think it ever will be, but a lot of people don't have confidence in it.
6. Toothpaste comes out of tubes more easily than it goes back in. Anything posted on SourceForge, released with an explicit statement of GPL or other irrevocable open license, is unlikely to be closed down successfully in the future, especially by an organization as clumsy and partly benign as a university.
Gotta go to class. I'll add observations as a self-reply later. I'm not very interested in arguing any of this---just sharing my experience.
Mike O'Donnell http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~odonnell/
You are not a troll because of your ideas. You are a troll because of how you say them. Whining about getting downmodded doesn't help your case.
The other thing a Fair or Flat Tax has going is that they are easily understandable by everyone. No more loopholes, if you make $1000 and the Flat tax is 15% then you lose $150 of it to the government whether you are rich, poor or in between. A Fair/Sales tax in my mind is even better since you can save all the money you want, but unless watching interest accumulate floats your boat, the rich will spend more (and save more) and thus be taxed proportionally more.
You hate your job? There's a support group for that. It's called "everybody" and they meet at the bar. -Drew Carey.
Are they allowed to completely strip my rights to the software?
No they cannot strip you of your rights, but you may give them away, or sell them. The choice is yours. It is pretty common in employment agreements, and it sounds like it was part of the agreement you signed to get the research position. They paid you for the rights with every paycheck.
In the future you will have to weigh the benefits of the position vs IP ownership. Or negotiate in advance.
if you obtain the right to publish your code under a BSD license. you will still be able to continue your development even for commercial purposes.
I love how I get modded troll for basically calling someone on their own nonsense. Proof that Slashdot moderators tend to not have any brains.
You'll note that point zero isn't really in the same spirit as the others, and I mentally read that as "this isn't really a proper point, but it so had to be said I included it anyway."
BTW, get the hell off your own self-importance. You were modded down for being a dick and way more confrontational than the situation warranted.
Just post the source to the public domain. The ACLU will be down their throats in a second if they try to stop you. Make sure to post some research results of the software along with it to make it clearly a documentation of a machine experiment you have conducted, and thus fair use.
If you want to use it as proprietary you are probably up a creek.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
Almost any University I have dealt with (I currently work for one), all students waive their rights for any IP they create while enrolled at the university. There is no negotiation with this point at 99.9% i know of.
Intellictual Property is one of the strongest points of most Universities this day and age. They take it VERY seriously.
'who already pay a disproportionate amount of the US tax.'
maybe cause they disproportionately appropriated the money in the first place ?
moron...
In the US, the author (i.e., the programmer) of the work (i.e, the software) owns the IP, unless the work is created as a work for hire. See http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf for a definition of "work for hire." Most employment agreements for programmers have IP provisions stating who owns the IP. Nevertheless, even if you are the author, the university may still have a "shop right" to use the work since you created it at work, on their computers.
In the end, I never understand programmers like the one who asked the question. First, he admitted that he got paid to write the code ("Having written a piece of software as part of my research employment"). Why would he think he owns it and why would he think that the software-is-for-everyone-Slashdot-crowd would agree with him? Second, good luck getting a job in this horrible economic climate when you tell them that you want to own the software that they are paying you to write.
6a. It's hard for a university to tell faculty what to do. If a faculty PI backs you releasing code, you should be OK. University's are especially reluctant to contradict faculty who bring in grant money. There might be some small (usually, infinitesimal) chance of making money from your software. That works out on the average less than once in the lifetime of a randomly chosen university. There is a definite rake-off from the grant. For every dollar spent at the behest of the PI, the university collects an additional $.idcr from the grant, where idcr is the "indirect cost rate". "Indirect cost" is often called, incorrectly, "overhead". Theoretically, it covers the fair share of general costs, including administration, physical plant, ..., attributable to the project. It used to be determined by a big negotiation between each university and its main funding agency, using all sorts of bean counts. Now, it's mostly just fiat from the government, take it or leave it. For a university, the rate is generally below 50% last time I checked (which means they get less than 1/3 of the total grant as "indirect cost", since this is the indirect cost rakeoff as a percentage of the direct cost, not of the total). For commercial labs, it was generally above 100%, because they have to make a profit. So do the universities, but they have to use a different legal word, since they are "nonprofit organizations." As far as I can tell, no university actually knows how federal funding affects its balance sheet. They seem to operate on faith that, while indirect cost rates are too low to yield a profit, and only reduce a loss, the payback through increased prestige produces a net win.
7. Universities have a good starting point for claiming ownership of all sorts of stuff produced by faculty, other employees, anything coming from a research grant. There's often a knee-jerk reaction to claim it because they can. They more often lose money that way than make it. I helped my university agree to theoretical profit-sharing on an absolutely brilliant idea from a colleague, which allowed a dazzlingly fast solution of hidden-surface problems in computer graphics. We spend some 10s of thousands patenting, and I'm pretty sure that nobody has licensed the patent in its lifetime. The right faculty member may be able to remind people that they have more to gain from keeping the grant in good shape, making investigators happy, taking credit for supporting development of something, than from trying to control it.
Good luck,
Mike O'Donnell http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~odonnell/
Then, do PARALLEL research.
Tell the University OR the employer that what you have done (if it is the truth) precedes your mutual conversation. You might be obligated to give them right of first refusal, but if what you find is in the open domain, then if they dick around on advancing an idea you thing should be advanced, build in the ticking time bomb: after so much time, they forfeit any right to restrict you.
This way, they should be deprived of being research or patent trolls. If you have a hobby of designing space ships, and if NASA or DOD hire you based on YOUR talent they didn't provide or nurture, but only want capital gain out of your mind or labor, then as long as your hobby never takes company-created (or company client) data, and so long as you can point that what you learn at work IS in the public domain or is extractable (just like most Top Secrets are aggregates of many assembled bits of UNCLAS info, but maybe it is the SOURCES that have more importance than the time-sensitive, expiring supporting data), then you should be free to do what EVER does not fall into the company's current mission statement. If they edit the mission statement to become so nebulous as to act as a dragnet for your brain, then find another employer. Even if it is a competitor. You have to eat, and you should be compelled to go from researcher to shoe-shine boy.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Edit the contract. The have the right to make demands. You have the right to accept or modify the contract. They have the right to then accept the contract with modifications. It is negotiations. I edit contracts and other legal documents I sign all the time. It is binding. My edits, with my initials by them, show that I only accept the contract provided that those edits are accepted. If you don't like the terms, negotiate or walk. It's that simple. FYI, I've virtually never had anyone reject my changes and my changes have been binding when issues arose.
---Are you implying that the University would attempt to use the fact that the author asked about the legality of his IP rights on Slashdot as evidence of bad faith against an argument of contractual vagueness? That on the stand, the attorney would produce several screenshots of this very post, hand them to the defendant, and say, "Well, what about these Slashdot posts?" The jury gasps, "He asked about it on Slashdot? He must have known it was illegal. Guilty, guilty, guilty!"
Well, yeah. Most likely, his work isnt that important and will be shuffled around the academics and used internally, and perhaps be sold to a few universities. What could happen is his work could be used for commercial exploitation (sold by university for profit).
His very question of "losing rights worth it" shows that he understands the ramifications of accepting that kind of agreement. I know one district judge that doesn't take lightly to those that understand a contract and flaunt it that they will refuse to abide by it. I'm not a lawyer but stuff that like calls for things like treble damages (ugh). I'm not a lawyer, but I can read a contract and understand the gist behind it. I know when it's stupid to sign an agreement heavily skewed against me.
---Trust me, it's very clear that you are not a lawyer. I, however, am a lawyer, and can tell you that you really should not become a lawyer. Or post answers to legal questions on Slashdot.
That's why I was blunt. Questions regarding employment, at-will, and contract work are reserved for lawyer types to deal with, especially when dealing with intellectual material. That law is ugly and you can get screwed quick.
ObStory: I worked at a company that wasn't terribly ethical. I worked at their company for 1 year (one year after that, they declared bankruptcy and skipped town). I set up much of their infrastructure for their little wireless internet fly-by-night operation. 6 months in, they realized that if they were to lose me, they'd be screwed. So instead of treating their people better, they decide to have everybody sign a "contract". Yeouch. It was a "you cant work anywhere in the world with computers" kind of trash. Of course they demanded that I signed it then and there. I said I needed to have a lawyer to check it over. Bad mistake on their part. I kept it and refused to relinquish it, then used it to quit my job and get unemployment. There's a section in Indiana code that disclaims that no company can force after-employment contracts and the recourse is that you get unemployment if you wish to quit right then and there.
I filed for my hearing with the unemployment judge. They never showed up. The bad side is I only received unemployment for 1 month (got a job, I hate being on the public dole).
I'm not so sure even "I" believe that....I mean, there is just another on this thread saying that his reading shows that the really rich...those making well over $250-$350K, really pay today, in this progressive system, with its loopholes and deductions.....pay very little tax...maybe like 11%?
Do your own research. Its simply not true. There are cases where its true, but as a whole the group pay the highest rate of tax.
So, would not a FairTAx type consumption tax replacement NOT finally get them?
First most proposed 'flat taxes' are on income not consumption. And if you look into them you'll find they are INVARIABLY backed by the rich. You really think someone like Forbes is backing a system to dramatically increase his tax bill ?
Secondly, most flat income taxes, wouldn't get the "dodgers" anyway because they are usually dodging reporting income, and/or creating offsetting paper losses that reduce their income on paper. So it doesn't really matter what the tax rate is if I make 5 million but report 200k, and pay taxes on 200k.
As for flat consumption taxes... don't be daft. That would translate directly into increased prices at the cash register - which would kill tourism outright, and the rich would simply dodge it by buying everything abroad.
So no, that wouldn't achieve your goals at all either.
A Fair/Sales tax in my mind is even better since you can save all the money you want, but unless watching interest accumulate floats your boat, the rich will spend more (and save more) and thus be taxed proportionally more.
1) The rich are the ones accumulating wealth (ie saving) while the poor spend every dollar they, and have debt on top of it. So a sales-tax tax amounts to a higher tax rate on the poor. They'll ultimately pay x% on everything they earn. while the rich would only pay on what they spend, which is less than they earn. The richer you are the lower your rate of tax.
2) Boosting the sales tax enough to eliminate income tax would raise prices to the point that tourism would die outright.
3) The rich would buy everything they wanted abroad to avoid the punitive sales taxes, a freedom the poor would be far less able to exercise. This would just further decrease the tax rate the rich pay.
No one would be 'stripping you of your rights' you would by abdicating your rights by signing an agreement saying as much. Your choice.
And another flat tax troll. Yay! :-)
And with Obama coming into office...I don't think the system in place will be very friendly to "the rich"..who already pay a disproportionate amount of the US tax.
Well, the whole point of the taxation system is contribution to the greater public good according to one's capacity. So, the rich better be paying a disproportionate amount of tax to the system/ country that allowed them the opportunities to get rich and the safety & security to keep their riches. Otherwise, there's something fundamentally unjust in the entire process.
You are not going to get a straight answer on this question. There are so many facets that are going to come into play that each case has to be dealt with separately. Some of the things that you may have to consider. As a research assistant it is very likely that you will be grouped into a "work-for-hire" category, which places you a weaker footing. This is the case whether the money for the project was internal to the university or through another source. At the end of the day, the University hired you. Another factor is the perception of the code. If it is viewed as a "product" the University will retain it - even more likely is that the federal sponsor will argue a stake in it. The Bayh-Dole act has had an interesting effect. It "forces" that Universities protect their IP, and work to commercialize. The intention was to get new know-how to the market. The side affect has been that everyone is a little bit more aware of the potential that lies in the IP. I have seen mixed reports on the effectiveness of the Bayh-Dole Act. What I have however seen is an increased interest by Universities to retain IP. In most cases, faculty and researchers listed on projects will be given consideration of ownership of the IP (at least shared). In fact many Universities now have policies that are quite explicit about ownership distribution and who stands to make what of IP (e.g. http://www.drexel.edu/provost/policies/copyright.asp, http://www.research.northwestern.edu/ori/copyright/CopyrightPolicySept2006.pdf). Northwestern mentions work-for-hire specifically which I suspect you fall under. In any IP discussion you will get a mass of moral and ethical viewpoints. Careful not to pay to much heed to these. Under some of those arguments, I should be able to lay claim to e-Bay, after all, it was my idea (I think). Best suggestion, get legal advice; and not from the University lawyers or IP office.
You need to figure out who is in the most control of this, as they will be the ones who figure out your rights, if you have any. Then, you can negotiate with them to get what you want, or decide not to do this. If they say they don't have any control over your rights and point at the college or another business, then you need to ask to have that in writing, with a signature and the date (dated material). This, you would keep for your records. As soon as they tell you who, though, start calling. Any time anyone says someone else controls something, ask for it in writing. If you just end up going in a huge circle, start asking to talk to managers or company CEO's. State your business and don't be emotional about it. I'm sure what you want is something they don't care a lot about, anyway. Whatever you do, ALWAYS get everything in writing, with a signature and date on it. Always... Documentation is the most important thing in the business world.
But, that is just for the flat taxes...getting away on reporting income. The consumption tax would catch/prevent that.
Sure, the consumption tax would raise the price on items, BUT people will have significantly MORE money in their pockets to buy things, so that balances out. We only bring in the consumption tax IF we completely dismantle the income tax system. One or the other...not both.
I don't see how purchasing things overseas will be a loophole, you have to just pay a VAT type tax on it coming into the US, like you do in Europe?
But, even if there is a flat tax....that is one with NO loopholes like we have in the current US system. All income gets reported, no deductions, no shelters, etc...nothing. If you get it...it gets reported.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Sure, the consumption tax would raise the price on items, BUT people will have significantly MORE money in their pockets to buy things, so that balances out. We only bring in the consumption tax IF we completely dismantle the income tax system. One or the other...not both.
But tourists won't have significantly more money in their pockets, so they won't come.
I don't see how purchasing things overseas will be a loophole, you have to just pay a VAT type tax on it coming into the US, like you do in Europe?
Which is why the yacht will be purchased for one of their many businesses and recorded as an entertainment expense to host clients... and any VAT paid on it would simply be refunded back against the VAT collected by that business. Surely you don't plan to have businesses pay this 'flat consumption income tax do you'?
After all that would be a massive drag on business... if ford has to pay this tax on all the component parts used to make cars, on all the tools it uses, on all the consultants, on everything...?
Do that and I guarantee you practically nothing will be 'made in the USA'.
But, even if there is a flat tax....that is one with NO loopholes like we have in the current US system. All income gets reported, no deductions, no shelters, etc...nothing. If you get it...it gets reported.
No such thing.
If I own 2 businesses, and one legitimately makes 5 million, and one legitimately loses 3.8 Million. How much income do I have? Is that a loophole? Not really, except the term 'legitimately loses' can be manipulated, especially if money is being moved through international systems that the IRS can't effectively audit.
Oh, sure you could 'close' that loophole, but that will be the end of entrepreneurship in America. Anyone with a bit of income would have no incentive whatsoever to gamble on a new business. If the tax rate were 20 percent, and I make 5 million, and then then take a risk on another business which loses 4.5 million, I'm going to still have a tax bill of 1 million, and am now actually in the hole.
The reason we have all these offsets, deductions, and tax breaks etc is to ENCOURAGE people with capital to develop new businesses etc, by reducing some of the risk, and making it a more attractive gamble.
THis is so true. Over the length of my career I have marked up hundreds of contracts. They always have a ten page contract full of boilerplate. Sometimes they agree almost immediately, sometimes they do not. Sometimes they are completely unreasonable and you have to walk away. It is sad but I had to walk away from one contract where they wanted an indefinite non-compete for themselves, their affiliates, and any affiliates they might have in the future. It never hurts to try and negotiate over the contract. Use common sense. Try to understand what they really need, what you really need, and where you can meet in the middle. If they need the software badly enough, they will negotiate. This has been my experience.
I am a paid consultant for a company, and I develop an in-house application. I have no contract whatsoever (family friend), and I would like to use the business knowledge that I've gained to develop a similar application, perhaps for general sale or SaS or for another company. What are my rights?
You claim the rich pay a disproportionate amount of tax, what is your standard on which you base this? Certainly not disposable income, that over and above what's needed for a reasonable standard of living. Certainly not in terms of how their lifestyle would change if they had their tax money to spend.
Perhaps you think only in terms of income tax rates without considering the tax games played by the rich. Only the stupid rich pay those rates, there are many legal ways to reduce taxes which are available to those who regard "more money" as investment capital rather than a chance to upgrade the kids lunches.
If you created this software as an employee, why do you think you have any rights to it? The work you do while you're working belongs to your employer, not to you.
I believe that the NSERC is who you need to negotiate with. Either NSERC or Industry Canada may by the owner due to the terms in the grant.
Section 101 of Title 17 of the U.S. Code defines "work made for hire" as:
1. A work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or
2. A work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire.
If it is a 'work for hire', ie: you are employed to create it, copyright goes to the person who employed you.
Isnt that obvious? you really think people will employ you, pay you to do a job, then you own the outcome of that?
Idiot.
Well, the INTENT was that I agreed with and was expanding on the, uh, 'concise' posting of the parent post -- that I wasn't trying to say this post armed you to negotiate your contract, but rather that the OP's obvious lack of legal understanding made it even MORE important they seek an attorney.
My execution might've been poor, though -- I don't exactly edit /. posts. :)
Thanks for the other bit; corrected.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
While that's the explanation I'd LIKE, really I just added 0 later, and - as another poster suggested - I didn't think it was as meaningful.
But mostly I just don't value editing on /. enough to go renumber my points just to add a new one at the start. I'm sure around here somewhere I have a post that starts with -1.
Original complainer clearly doesn't understand that integers stretch in both directions.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
I was just trying to pretend to be funny... which I admit is often sortof orthogonal to seeming rational. But rockets sounds like a better idea, around here.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
CreepyCrawler did a better job of responding on the merits, so I'll just touch a few points:
I'm not a lawyer and, frankly, don't want to be a lawyer. I do HAVE a lawyer, and have entered a modest number of contracts...
If you think I need to be a lawyer to make my /. post, which, summarized, basically says to the OP "You're an idiot and you need a lawyer" - then I think you have a rather odd view of the world. You needn't be an attorney to handle that post.
I completely agree that the probability is low of any dispute rising to the actual expensive investigation and lengthy court hearings (because OP would have to make something of very significant value AND somehow have significant resources to continue fighting against this contract in court AND the contract would have to be weak enough that this didn't get immediately shut down.)
I also agree that this slight relevance depends on the contract actually being very badly written - because establishing his bad faith through crazy methods is only necessary if there's any doubt about whether he understood the contract in the first place. Which, if it's written reasonably, there probably isn't. I agree. And etc., I'm sure there's more.
However, if you don't think that an argument of bad faith in this context could EVER be relevant, especially to damages, or that IF it was worth enough money for them to do an intensive investigation and there is no circumstance where they would EVER use this if they knew about it (remembering that we haven't actually seen how good or bad the actual contract is) then I'm not sure I believe you're a lawyer. However, I suspect you're just saying that it's vanishingly, impractically unlikely - which I agree with.
But more importantly, you really missed my point there. First my meta-point, that the OP should take away from my post that not having an attorney is bad, and HIM not having an attorney is even worse. Do you disagree with either of these points?
To rehash that particular point of mine, it was:
- Whether /. is findable/admissible/worthwhile or not I can tell from your OP that you _believe_ this contract would restrict your rights, and you want to sign it then ignore it.
- That doing this to a random university makes you, in my opinion, a liar and a badly behaving person - whether or not the courts can thwack you for it.
- And that, in general, the courts may thwack you for acting in bad faith, if it can be demonstrated. (through obvious reading of the contract, or whatever)
- My mention of his /. post was really just illustrative - which I'd think you'd understand, considering the use of 'gasp' and 'Guilty' in your post.
P.S. ASKING on /. isn't what I meant as evidence of bad faith but (assuming you went through the possibly significant work to prove he really was the poster) his specific wording seemed in pretty bad faith to me.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot