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?"

Comments

attorney - and you're probably wrong. Fail.

[arete]

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.

Re:Do what the rest of us scientists do, publish

[yerM)M]

I hate to bring this up, but this reminds me of why the majority of american taxpayers prefer a tax system that hurts themselves. i.e. they imagine themselves being rich and don't want to screw themselves when they (never) get there.

Having been through this, there are three likely outcomes in decreasing probability.

• What you do stinks and you'll be embarrassed looking at it two years down the line.

• What you do is ok and gives you a paycheck and knowledge for the next task

• What you do is great.

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.

Re:Not always.

[TheRaven64]

My university owns code I wrote for some projects, which is why I got it written into the grant application that any code developed on those projects would be released under a BSD license. This means that it doesn't really matter who owns it - I can use it in any project I want to in the future.