If I build a website while on salary, is it considered my bosses intellectual property? I have never had a contract and the domain is registered in my own name. I put in a lot of extra time to build it without getting payed for it. it wasn't directly what I was hired to do but I built it to help me do my job better.
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If you are a salaried employee who officially works for the company, then the work that you do for the company belongs to the company. They do not need a contract with you. Your putting in extra time has no bearing on it. Technically, you only have to put in the time you are salaried for. They do not have to pay you for extra time unless they consider it overtime that they mandated. The product is their property in entirety, including any extra work you put in on your own to it. It doesn't matter if you were instructed to do it or not. What you do for the company belongs to them. That includes any tools you build to help your work. It includes your emails on the company account. It includes everything you put on their computer except items that are illegal for you to put on their computers including copyrighted items and your personal items. If you build something for yourself at home, and you take it to the company and put it on their computer, then that is an infringement. In that case, the item is yours and for you to use it at the company, you must get the company to make a contract with you or purchase it for you to use it. Otherwise they are using it illegally. And you are acting as the company when you are working - not as yourself. It's the same for someone else's software. If you purchase it for your home use (really you are purchasing a license for using it), you cannot take it to work and use it there unless the purchase agreement allows it. Otherwise, your company would have to purchase it for your use at your company. You cannot purchase it yourself for use at your company. It must be purchased by them to be used on their machines. Also you may not make a copy of the item and use it for anything not work related. It belongs to them. All you may do is use the knowledge and techniques you learned from the work, and apply it to other things you do. The overall concepts and ideas behind the item you developed for them are also theirs. You have to show that you've significantly changed the ideas to use them. e.g. as Mark Zuckerberg did for Facebook to the guys with the original idea (see the Social Network movie). |
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A lot depends on your relationship with your employer. I would consider that if I spent any amount of my salaried day building this site in order to do my job then I built it for them. If you are on good terms you can discuss it with them. If not, then you could put on a large pair of cojones and walk off with it - in which case you must work out if you are facing a huge legal bill defending yourself. |
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Its a hard one, if you are a standard employee and the thing you have built is within their domain, then most likely they own it. If its nothing to do with them (they play in CRM and work in .NET and you write a computer game in JAVA) then you can argue its yours. What do you want to do with it is the real question? If your looking to leave your employer and start a new business based off this thing then they may be unhappy. If all your really doing is using it as part of your "library" then most employers wouldn't complain and would either let you have it or at least work out a shared arrangement if it did benefit them. |
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