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I work as a lab technician/researcher at a university, and I wonder if anyone has the answer to a question that's been playing on my mind for a while....
My job description doesn't cover anything like software development, but when our IT department produced some tracking software for us, it was frankly unusable and an embarrassment to the bloke wot wrote it. It was cumbersome, and didn't actually work properly. It was cobbled together for existing bits of freeware, and wasn't specific enough to our situation. So, in my spare time, outside of work I wrote a better bit of software, that does exactly the job it's supposed to do, and is very easy to use. It's all PHP based, if that makes any different....
I have FTP logs showing me uploading the various bits of the software from home at various times through the night, from my home PC (including one at 1 am in the morning!) so it's pretty easy to show that a significant amount of the code wasn't written in work time.
So, the question is, who actually owns the the software? Is it "mine" to do with as I please or does the university have overall ownership of it all?
Were you tasked with this by your employer?
I have a vague memory that your employerownsther IP in anything you do in the course your employment.
Could be bollocks.
What's your plan, invoice them?
Sounds like it's yours to with what you like if you wrote it in your free time. If you did it while on the job they could claim ownership but doubt they would.
I have a vague memory that your employerownsther IP in anything you do in the course your employment.
This was certainly the case at the uni I used to work for but was trivially easy to get around.
It wasn't a task that I was set, it was definitely a voluntary thing.
The plan, such that it is, would be to delete it and get rid of it all. As I see it, if it's mine, I can, if it's theirs, I probably can't.
The whether I should or not, that's a totally different question! 🙂
The vagueness sounds expensive to resolve whatever. I wouldn't assume it was yours now either as you have distributed it and it now lives on someone else's server. Consult a lawyer or let it pass.
Other questions that crossed my mind
What is the IT policy? Permission? Are uni servers considered public domain? Did you have agreement and a contract in place beforehand? Could you work with uni for mutual benefit if it is potentially commercial?
I guess this is some sort of ELN or Workflow software, like Accelrys / IDBS / Xybion make for various areas?
Is it in use by your department? Do the users know who wrote it?
Usually unis have a policy by which Ip developed by staff belongs to them. You may have to consider that you might be in breach of policy by uploading external software to uni servers, and thus subject to disciplinary procedures.
So check that out.
What do you actually want to happen? You could argue for setting up a spinoff, or you might want to make it public domain
Rather like the directions to Cork " if I was you I wouldn't start from here." The answer to your question is in your employment contract and any IT policy you signed it ought to cover IP rights . Absent the contract/or IT policy your creation your property. Worst case its their programme on their computer delete it they sue you for economic loss .