I've been down this path at another company. I was contracted to write a program that would be used by the company. The full plan also included marketing this program & we would split the proceeds 50/50. A month or so before we were ready to start selling the program I was terminated. Since the company owner has a history of unethical behavior, I suspected he was revising the agreement to make the split more like 100/0 (me being the zero!) Cue the lawyers: Since I was working under a contract & not as an employee of the company, I retained full ownership of the program. We thus both made a total of $0 off the sale. On the bright side this equates to millions of MD's! BTW: Lawyer fees totaled about 25% of what I got paid to write the program.
>>> "McKay, Curtis" <cmc...@bths201.org> 8/2/2010 8:21 AM >>> Here at our district Abe and I figured there was no way something was on the books about selling software created by us at work so we figured we should get a discussion going. 10 seconds later, HR copied a page out of the employee handbook and gave it to us outlining all the details about selling something created on district time. It’s actually pretty lenient, but then we just said, can we give it away for free? And was told, have at it. J Curtis McKay Network Administrator Belleville Township High School District 201 cmc...@bths201.org From:tech-geeks-boun...@tech-geeks.org [mailto:tech-geeks-boun...@tech-geeks.org] On Behalf Of Michael Orr Sent: Monday, August 02, 2010 7:54 AM To: tech-geeks@tech-geeks.org Subject: Re: [tech-geeks] Internet Acceptable Use Policy - Ownership clause I can not say for schools. But, yes in most businesses anything created while on the clock is the property of the business. I worked at one location where they even had a meeting on something similar. The company stated that even if an employee was on his/her break or lunch and created or invented an item no matter how big or how small they company did have the right to the piece if they so chose to. This of course created a lot of tension. >>> <tech-geeks-boun...@tech-geeks.org> 8/2/2010 7:37 AM >>> We've got a parent questioning the "ownership clause" of our IAUP. He's concerned we're infringing on his daughter's "intellectual property" rights by including the word "created" in the clause. As far as I remember, the ownership clause was part of the original generic template we used to create the policy. I was also under the impression that most schools, universities, and work places do lay claim to intellectual property created while on premise. Here's the clause as listed: "Ownership--The computer network, including all data files, e-mail, and applications, is the property of ---- High School. All materials and information **created**, transmitted or stored on this system are the property of ---- High School and may be accessed or removed by authorized personnel. Users should not have any expectation ofprivacy with respect to such materials and information." Has anyone else dealt with this type of situation? Any suggestions? --- Scanned by M+ Guardian Messaging Firewall ---
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