Thanks Stuart, that makes sense. The contracts didn't cover this stuff in detail (a fact that should have raised some flags early on).
A lot of things changed rather suddenly and I didn't have time to investigate this as thoroughly as I would have liked. We have now reached an agreement that satisfies all parties. Cheers. On Tuesday, 20 December 2011, Stuart Kinnear <[email protected]> wrote: > It really depends on the contract you signed up to, and whether that contract was bound to you or extends to organisations that you work for. For IP to work it really needs to be tied down to something that can be defined well. I suggest investing in a few books from Amazon on the area to get a grasp of the things that the legal eagles think of, go to a local business advisory centre & take advantage of some free legal advice and then, if it is something that that can be screwed down, then get a lawyer versed in IP to scrutinise what you signed. > Regards, Stuart > > On 20 December 2011 10:54, Matt Siebert <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Hi all, >> >> I'm not looking for anything legally binding, but just wondering what is generally the case with regards to ideas and IP - are ideas considered IP? or does there need to be some specific detail in order to be protected by IP law? >> For the last 18 months I've been working on a startup with a friend and an investor. My friend has been an employee in the investor's company from the start (and years before). Initially I was contracting my spare time to the investor's company to do the proof of concept and later I commenced employment with the investor's company in order to work on the new product. >> There have been ups and downs and ultimately the startup has suffered many losses due to decisions made by the investor against our advice. Right now the sh*t is beginning to hit the fan and my friend and I have had enough and are considering leaving and starting our own business in our spare time. We have no intention to do anything legally or morally wrong. We won't be working on the same product we've been working on under the investor's company, but my friend had some ideas for future products that we would like to use. These are just ideas with a 1 sentence description and no real details. As such we're unsure where these fall with respect to IP laws. >> In the end, we're looking for ways forward that benefit all parties, but are quite prepared to just walk away if such a solution cannot be achieved. >> Any advice would be greatly appreciated and I understand it's not legally binding or anything. >> Cheers. > > > -- > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Stuart Kinnear > Mobile: 040 704 5686. Office: 03 9589 6502 > > SK Pro-Active! Pty Ltd > acn. 81 072 778 262 > PO Box 6117 Cromer, Vic 3193. Australia > > Business software developers. > SQL Server, Visual Basic, C# , Asp.Net, Microsoft Office. > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- > >
