There are some tasks where the obvious language choice is with scripting languages: bash, Python, Ruby, Tcl... however I find it hard to protect a company IP once the product is delivered because the application is never compiled. The client will have complete access to every single line of code. Which one are the choices to protect a p...
A colleague of mine made an assertion that "your employer owns all patents that you file while an employee". Is this accurate? For example: Suppose I'm an employee of company xyz where I make widgets of type "w". In my spare time I make widgets of type "t" as a hobby. I do not use any resources from company xyz at all for my hobby. ...
If I pay someone to write some software for me and our contract doesn't specify, do I own the rights to the source code, or does the company who wrote the software? Who does the intellectual property belong to in this situation? I'm specifically interested in the answer as it applies in the United Kingdom. ...
I was in process of researching web for potential competitors for a software (web site) I was going to start building, when I found that a patent for a similar software already exist in US (US patent). That patent describes a software application which looks pretty similar to what I have envisaged and it also describes the algorithms wh...
Hi, I'm developing a JavaScript API which would work in a similar way as e.g. Google Analytics (GA) tracking code. Because they already thought of a nice structure, I would hate having to re-invent variable and methods names for the client. Where GA would use: var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-xxxx-x']); _gaq.push([...
I'm looking to incolude code from Wikipedia articles in production software, and also quote it in a publication. Will this affect the licensing of either the code or the publication? My suspicion is that Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License may apply (confusingly) to the code, but not to the publication as here the code is ...
How do you go about open sourcing - and then managing - the code developed from within your company? This has happened quite a bit: Google, Google Android, RedHat, Canonical/Ubuntu, Apple, Apple CUPS etc. In my company we've developed some ancillary code to help us make the products that we sell. We're not in the business of developi...
Large companies often require that small contractors surrender all IP that they produce during the period of time that they perform work for the company, nominally restricted to work related to their contract, but with relatively loose terms. Is it possible to perform contract coding work under such restrictions, for multiple companies ...