On 5/11/05, Steve Onnis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> If your employed by the company on a salary/full time/part time basis, then
> the company owns it.  It comes hand in hand with being an employee.

Negative.

An employer does not retain the rights to all creations you develop
whilest under the employee, unless they specifically allocate you as a
resource to build that said product. In that going by the above
assumption, technically you could argue that my employer owns my model
plane i just build out of popsticks. Why? well name one contract that
you've seen where it states that "we own all coldfusion applications
you make"... keyword being coldfusion. As technologies are so vast
that you really need to outline whats required of you as an employee
and what you have to give over (ie technology constraints) in order to
be one.

An Example comes to mind where, it specifically said that it forbid me
to create an application in the same industry as my employer is in for
6 months upon leaving the employer (which can be argued as "restraint
of trade"). Now first glance that sounds fine, but the contract
neglected to outline what their "Industry is" so, that clause was
considered "vague and open to suggestion".

This is umm adhoc legal advice and probably lost in translation, but
everytime I start/leave a job, i see a lawyer to simply cover my butt
(what do i need to be mindful of etc) - kind of like a medical check
before i start the next job.

You'd be amazed what gets put into contracts but have absolutely no
substance and the clauses that do, are so vaguely defined that they
could mean a million things and so wouldn't see the light of day if 
legal action were to be taken. (Keep in mind when a legal action takes
place, there has to be "no doubt" that partyA screwd partyB over).

In your case, i'd say yeah you should be fine. Provided you can state
that its your own creation and you aren't using work that you've
designed/created in the organisation. ... basically don't freakin
install it at work, keep it off your work hdd.. in fact don't even
bring it in on a laptop to work as that could be a gray area.

Seek a lawyer before you go to market, even its still in idea stage as
they will have the ins/outs of specifically whats legal/illegal
instead of this throw-away advice on CFAUSSIE :)

Heh i've had one or two employers threaten legal advice, i simply roll
my eyes, hand the threats to my solicitor, which he then draws up a
reply which tells them that clauses ABC are fubar, and if you really
want to go down this path, we are more then happy to.

It helps also having a mate who's a lawyer and doesn't charge you ;) hehehehe.

-- 
Regards,
Scott Barnes
Who thinks Chads Signatures are funny and should be part of all email clients.

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