Who owns the code, who owns the algorithm, who owns the idea?

Posted by Vorac on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Vorac
Published on 2012-06-28T08:10:15Z Indexed on 2012/06/28 9:22 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 237

Filed under:

legal

|

source-code

|

intellectual-property

This question got me thinking what products of the programming effort belong to the employer, and what don't.

The two extremes are (0) the code - it apparently belongs to the employer and (1) the learned personal and technical skills. But what is in between? Who owns the pseudocode/algorithm? Who owns the general idea of the algorithm? Who owns the know-how that such an algorithm may serve some useful purpose (e.g. on this site questions are values, as well as answers)?

Also: Who owns an idea on the web?

© Programmers or respective owner

Related posts about legal

SCALE 8x: Free software legal issues

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
<b>LWN.net:</b> "But in reality the FLOSS ecosystem relies on a complex legal framework in order to run smoothly and to stand up to proprietary software competition: the various software licenses, contribution agreements, copyright and other "intellectual property" law." >>> More
Copyright infringement - inside the legal minefield

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
<b>New Zealand Herald:</b> "Several weeks ago the Australian high court ruled in favour of Aussie ISP iiNet in a landmark legal battle where AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) argued that iiNet was as guilty as some of its subscribers of online copyright infringement… >>> More
Signing redistributed files

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
In order to submit a desktop application for the Windows 8 app store, you need to digitally sign any driver or .exe associated with the application. However, the application I was trying to submit contains several files that are redistributions of other companies' software, and some of these are not… >>> More
Is it illegal to rewrite every line of an open source project in a slightly different way, and use it in a closed source project?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
There is some code which is GPL or LGPL that I am considering using for an iPhone project. If I took that code (JavaScript) and rewrote it in a different language for use on the iPhone would that be a legal issue? In theory the process that has happened is that I have gone through each line of the… >>> More
Is it really free to deploy SharpDevelop apps?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I'm trying SharpDevelop to develop c# applications. Regardless of the language and the IDE, is it free to deploy applications that use WinForms? I've been developing with MonoDevelop just because it has a designer for Gtk# (client doesn't want to pay more for licences as to use VS...), but it's too… >>> More

Related posts about source-code

svn: Syncing main source code with committed source code

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
To manage my source code I have created SVN subversion server by using command svnadmin create /myrepos svn import /root/MySourceCode file:///myrepos I have created user and provided rw access to him. User can easily commit their changes in repository. How can I update my sourcecode (/root/MySourceCode)… >>> More
Hyperlinked, externalized source code documentation

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
Why do we still embed natural language descriptions of source code (i.e., the reason why a line of code was written) within the source code, rather than as a separate document? Given the expansive real-estate afforded to modern development environments (high-resolution monitors, dual-monitors, etc… >>> More
Freelancing - Share the source code?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I have developed a couple of form based windows application in vb.net for a client and they all work well and he paid me through a freelance site. I have handed over the executable and the setup to the client and all was well. Now the client wants the source code for the application. Is there a general… >>> More
Software for "High-level" source code (C++) Management

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
after a lot of small-medium projects, I have a lot of libraries and test programs here and there. Also, I must admit that some of the "best practices" I learnt are not that "good" IMHO. In particular, documenting your code and making a "high-level" documentation is not useful in practice: High-level… >>> More
Static source code analysis for C# that operates on source code level

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Current static source analysis tools for C# (or other .NET languages) usually operate on the assembly-level. They use reflection to analyse the code. Are there tools available that operate on a source code level only (like lint for C)? >>> More