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.
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get it in writing.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
Talk to a fucking lawyer.
Or back down.
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.
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.
Two things:
First: Lawyers are expensive. Very expensive. Most working people can't afford them very well, much less research assistants or students.
Second: The average city isn't exactly crawling with competent Intellectual Property lawyers. I would say the typical lawyer would say "huh" and maybe get you some boilerplate legal templates to use, and not really help you much beyond that.
I say stand your ground if you have agreed to nothing so far. Losing you completely gains nothing for them, they will cave in. I've never found it hard to allow organizations or institutions to allow me to keep rights to my software, as long as they get to use it.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Universities are non-profits
You seriously believe that? They only get taxed like that but for some reason they make a lot of "Excess-Revenue". Which will go to a new football field or a building. Then they will still think that after paying 30k in tuition that you owe them and you should donate money to them.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
well, obviously they can't claim rights to code that they didn't fund the development of. that doesn't seem like what the University's policy is.
the lesson here isn't to not sign anything you don't agree with (that's just common sense), but rather don't do public research if you're not comfortable with doing public research.
the NSERC seems to be a government institution, so all research that they fund is by definition public research. naturally, academic research is going to remain in the control of the academic institution where it was conducted. this is done in order to keep publicly funded research free and open to everyone in the spirit of academic openness and to facilitate scientific collaboration. you can't accept government funding and then turn around and decide you don't want anyone else to have access to your research. it's not fair to taxpayers for them to foot the bill for proprietary research that is not made available to the public.
in the context of software development, i would expect the university to release the source code under some kind of open source license. if it's a BSD license then the developer who wrote the code should still be able to commercialize his software if he wants to. he has every right to make money off of his code. he just doesn't have the right to accept research funding from taxpayers and then renege on the agreement to make the research/source code public. besides, it would really hinder scientific/technological progress if all public/academic research were tied down with patents and copyrights. waiting 15-20 years after a scientific breakthrough is made before another researcher can build upon it is just impractical.
it's really no different from being paid to do software development for a commercial company. if your employer pays you to develop the software, you can't expect to retain the rights to the code you just sold to them. i mean, what are they paying you for?
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?
The researcher is paid to research new IP. That is their job. Therefore any new research belongs to the employer. The cleaner is employed to clean. That is their job. Therefore any new research belongs to them.
Not that difficult to understand.
being a derivative means it's GPL whether I technically own it or not.
No, it's not. You can freely combine GPL and proprietary code as long as you do not distribute the software. So the university can always choose to rewrite that 5% and license the code under whatever license they choose. If you release the software illegally, to try and bind the university to the GPL obligation to provide the source, you are guilty of illegal distribution of copyrighted material and the university is under no obligation to honor the GPL. In that case you could be sued by the university for illegal distribution of copyrighted material and by the people you gave the software to, for failing to uphold the GPL license (since you do not have the right to distribute the source, as you are obliged to). If they find this post of yours or similar statements made by you, they can also sue you for fraud, since you effectively tried to make them give their rights away, by using deception.
It is an interesting case what happens when you use deceptive practices to make the university release the software with GPL components. In many ways, it's like slipping drugs into the bag of a traveler without them knowing. They are completely innocent of any willful crime, but in practice courts tend to sentence them hashly, even when their arguments are reasonable, unless there is a confession by the person who planted the drugs (or other hard evidence). However, courts tend to be far more lenient to organisations than to individuals, so they can probably get out of trouble by simply no longer distributing the software.
PS. IANAL, so this could all be wrong ;)
PS2. By trying to abuse the GPL to violate the law, you are not doing the Free Software movement any favors. If someone tries to follow your scheme, gets into a conflict with the organization they work for and the resulting mess gets highly publicized, organizations will start equating the GPL with loss of IP, theft and fraud. Is that what you want?
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
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.
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/
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.
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.
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.........
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.