Software Product

w00519772

I have worked for a large company for the last six and a half years as a full time employee. The company is not a software development company - I develop software to facilitate their processes. I have developed a large and very complex piece of software. I am the sole developer.

We have had a lot of interest recently from similar organizations that want to buy it. I am the sole developer at this organization. A senior person within the organization recently said to me: "I am surprised you have not patented it for yourself". I think he was joking though he said it with a serious face. I wanted to ask some questions:

1) Has anyone else had any experience were they have developed a very successful and unique product for an organization and were you rewarded?
2) If I ever left the organization (which I don't plan to), can I take the source code with me? I guess it is up to the organization?

Pennywise

It will all depend on what your contract of employment says with regards to intellectual property created during your employment. Any half decent contract will give all rights to your employer. If your contract is an amateur half-baked one, it may well not be explicit, but even if it doesn't say, you'll probably find that an inferred term of your employment contract is that the employer retains the legal right. If you try to sell it yourself, it's not that much different from selling (stealing) physical goods that you make at work, i.e. on a production line. Just because you can't see it, doesn't make it fair game to be stolen.

Mistral001

w00519772 wrote: »

. A senior person within the organization recently said to me: "I am surprised you have not patented it for yourself". I think he was joking though he said it with a serious face.

The patenting of software has been discussed on this forum a few times. Generally it can only be patented in certain circumstances as far as I know. The software has to be linked to something physical I think and the law in the USA is different to the UK,

InsideInsurance

Did you develop the application in working time/ paid overtime or was it done 100% in your own time?

Unlike the USA ownership of IP must explicitly be transferred where as there if you are paid to create something the payer automatically owns it. That said, the norm is that your contract of employment will state that they own the IP for all that you create whilst at work.

If they own it, then no you cannot take it with you without their explicit agreement. Even if they agreed you can take a copy of it you'd need to be clear on if you have unrestricted use of it or if they allow you to take a copy to play with but you cannot resell or redistribute it etc.


Its worth while getting someone else to review it too. Worked for one client to replace an in house developed system with an off the shelf solution. The system they had was terrible, it was little more than a collection of spreadsheets and Access databases that you had to copy and paste data between, make manual adjustments to formulas etc and had been created over 20 years by the business users.

As an outside person with a modicum of sense on IT this clearly isnt a controlled system and would have any Risk or Audit person in tears. Speaking to the business users for the first time, they didnt think it needed replacing, they thought it should be sold as a commercial package!

When you are very close to something, when you remember how bad things were, when you havent experienced what others are doing you can sometimes over estimate how good your solution is.

Similarly in some places anything is better than nothing, many other places will want all software to be properly robust with RBAC, backup, scalability etc etc

paddyrg

II makes a very valid point about the absolute value of the development externally - I used to work for a HUGE software development company (hint - I'll bet you a pound you use at least one of their products) and these kinds of homespun collections of skunkworks tools are handles with extreme caution. Business units need to work efficiently, sure, but these systems that exist between cracks in formal processes can be hard to maintain and pose risks to interfacing systems. And unless the competitor uses identical interfaces and software versions, the job starts all over!

In fact skunk tools cause such issues, they're hunted down and replaced or redeveloped. One, for instance, looked all flashy on the surface, yet thanks to a lack of understanding by the enthusiastic amateur the business unit had underbilled by tens of thousands of pounds over the years! Another system looked great on the surface but again, a lack of deep understanding meant the guy who wrote it produced reports that 1) slowed the main corporate accounting system to a crawl every Friday afternoon by 2) pulling every single dataset in the database several times over for each record 3) and yet still managing to use inappropriate joins to lose whole sets of data. They used this super miracle report he'd created in Excel for major decisions - and it was WRONG!

Modern tools make it easy to make bad data look impressive. Not saying that's what yours does, but a lot of homegrown systems do. Interfaces can change, software upgrade, processes mature, and the skunk tools get patched and sprawl, and lose/miss critical data.

If you're not a professional developer with experience, then there is a significantly higher risk of problems selling it as commercial software. If your system is robust and easily interfaced with the other party's systems, I'd suggest your company licenses the other company to use it and to let you out to integrate and maintain it (splitting your fee). I could, though, see this taking a lot of your time and creating a massive liability hole for your employer!

w00519772

Thanks for the responses. Just for the record: I am a professional developer with a degree in Computer Science and 11 years experience. I use Test Driven Development at work. The code is scaleable.

bris

You don't own it your company does, you developed it for them and they paid you to do it for them.


Who do you think owns windows 8, or iTunes?

robatwork

Sounds like they own it completely.

You could offer to buy it from them then set out on your own.

w00519772

bris wrote: »

You don't own it your company does, you developed it for them and they paid you to do it for them.


Who do you think owns windows 8, or iTunes?

I know they own the product. I am asking if I would have the right to take the source code if I left (not to sell it), but maybe refer to it if I was employed somewhere else.

It is not an "off the shelf" solution. It is highly bespoke.

System

I doubt it. You developed it as part of your job. The company owns it lock, stock, barrel and source code.

jjlandlord

w00519772 wrote: »

I know they own the product. I am asking if I would have the right to take the source code if I left (not to sell it).

If they own it, you obviously cannot take the source code with you.

You may seek their agreement through some kind of deal, and if they refused the only thing you could do would be to rewrite it from scratch without referring to the original source code.