Ask HN: Intellectual property 101

1 point·wensing··2 comments

I live and work in Florida, have not signed any sort of IP agreement with my employer, and am now wondering about the implicit agreement (if any) between myself and them regarding code and the ideas in the code. Is it generally true that a company may own the program itself (code), but not the ideas contained therein (unless explicitly stated otherwise in a signed contract)?

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I'm not a lawyer, but I just went through a round with one on a similar issue. In my jurisdiction (which is outside the US) the principle was that code was protected, and ideas were not (unless patented), BUT if I went ahead and built a product that was suitably similar to one I had worked on before under an employment contract, the burden of proof would be on me to prove that I did not copy the code (and thus it was a good idea to throw in some novel features, and use a different programming language/framework/platform).

Still: spend the bucks and ask a lawyer, if the issue is relevant to you. Better to have too much legal advice than too little (believe you me.)

The company holds copyright to all the code you write on company time.

In theory, abstract ideas in the code are not patentable. Patents are supposed to be specific embodiments of ideas. In practice, you totally need a lawyer if you or the employer are considering patents.

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