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
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legal

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source-code

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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?

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