I whole-heartedly agree about the get a lawyer part.
The one thing that I would point out is that if the University wants to claim ownership then they must accept that he was an "employee" of some sort. In that case, criminal charges need to be directed at the employer. The employer is responsible for what the employee does.
Utah can charge him or steal his code but they can't do both!
This is exactly the point. In Canada, a contract that does not benefit both parties involved is unenforceable. The first thing a court would ask is what benefit was offered to each party. My company got around that by paying me $1.00 (minimum cash amount required to make a contract legal) which was fine by me since the agreement only required that I not swipe any of their current clients. The upshot is, if the company doesn't offer you some form of compensation for signing an NDA they haven't got a leg to stand on (at least in Canada... eh!)
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I whole-heartedly agree about the get a lawyer part.
The one thing that I would point out is that if the University wants to claim ownership then they must accept that he was an "employee" of some sort. In that case, criminal charges need to be directed at the employer. The employer is responsible for what the employee does.
Utah can charge him or steal his code but they can't do both!
This is exactly the point. In Canada, a contract that does not benefit both parties involved is unenforceable. The first thing a court would ask is what benefit was offered to each party. My company got around that by paying me $1.00 (minimum cash amount required to make a contract legal) which was fine by me since the agreement only required that I not swipe any of their current clients. The upshot is, if the company doesn't offer you some form of compensation for signing an NDA they haven't got a leg to stand on (at least in Canada... eh!)