Re: Need programers

From: Ryan Johnson <dowrie@guildofblades.com>

Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 23:37:30 +0000

> It might have been in an area that the company had employed him, so
> perhaps isnt directly relevant to the discussion, but whats relevant in
> terms of a programmers job?<<

If you are working for an employer, anything done on their time belongs
to them. If you have a no compete clause, or a contract clause that says
that you won't work for anyone else or at least for anyone else in that
skill related field while working for them, then you can't.

If howerver, no such clauses exist, then technically anything you do on
your own time belongs to you. Where they *might* be able to claim
otherwise is if you did a project that somehow violated one of their
intellectual properties. These would be "patents", "Trademarks", or
"copyrights". More than likely, any claim against a programmer would be
that of a copyright nature. If you write code on your own that mirrored
code that you wrote for them too closely, they could make a reasonably
justified claim that you have violated their copyright. Since program
code is, when all is said and done, nothing but words, numbers, and
symbols, that means program code may be copyright protected. That means
you could not duplicate any portions of that code that were not already
deemed to be "in the public domain".

Hope that clarifies.

Ryan S. Johnson
CEO, Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com

References

Re: Need programers
Ryan Johnson <dowrie@guildofblades.com>
Tue, 21 May 2002 06:43:20 +0000
Re: Need programers
madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)
Tue, 21 May 2002 09:33:53 +0000
Re: Need programers
Kevin Cowley <ketil@argonet.co.uk>
Thu, 23 May 2002 09:33:04 +0000
Re: Need programers
Graham McDermott <graham@bankieboy.demon.co.uk>
Thu, 23 May 2002 22:38:06 +0000