Intellectual property and the independent worker

What are peoples views on intellectual property and being an independent worker?

I don’t think I’ve yet had two contracts with the same IP clause, whats frustrating is having to read them to make sure you aren’t giving away rights to all the content you own.

What it comes down to as someone doing work like troubleshooting. If I develop a query against a DMV or develop a process for processing xEvents then in many contracts I have the client owns that meaning I can’t use it again elsewhere. I understand when what you develop is core to their business i.e. a trading application, but I wonder if one can enforce IP rules on utility type code that is core for your business and not theirs.

Published 05 July 2010 18:20 by simonsabin

Comments

05 July 2010 18:54 by SimonS Blog on SQL Server Stuff

# Intellectual property and the independent worker

What are peoples views on intellectual property and being an independent worker? I don’t think I’ve yet

28 July 2010 11:33 by GrumpyOldDBA

# re: Intellectual property and the independent worker

I don't see that a query could ever be covered - if you develop a system then that's different and the employer has those sort of rights by default as they are paying you to that work so you couldn't claim it as yours. If you sell an already written application developed outside then maybe slightly different.

I tend to not worry. I carry my code and routines with me. As far as contracts are concerned it was explained to me once that you can almost sign anything but if it comes to litigation then the courts would decide in favour of what is considered fair and reasonable.

I had a legal doc sent to me after leaving a contract to do with IP - couldn't make head nor tail or it - my legal people said that I should state that I couldn't understand it and that if the former client was willing to pay for my legal people to examine it then I might then be able to sign it.

As an aside I was once presented with my own code from my blog as something a client wanted me to implement on their system < grin >