I suppose this is probably a question for a lawyer, but I’ll ask it here, anyway.
I work for an ISP. I built an app in Flutter that functions as a database of various types of telco/networking hardware. I originally built it to make it easy to reference the specs/documentation of various pieces of hardware without having to dig through the manufacturer’s website every time.
I’m not really sure why they would want it, since there’s not really any meaingful monetization potential.
I built the app in my own time without using any of the company’s resources. I’m considering publishing the app to the app stores so my peers can use it, as well as members of the general public.
Since the app somehow pertains to my work with my employer, do you think there’s any reasonable chance they’re going to try to claim the app as their intellectual property since I was employed by them (not as a developer) while the app was developed?
Not a lawyer, but: As far as I know if you haven’t used company resources to develop whatever you developed, the company has no claim of ownership, even if it pertains the work you do. It is your free time and your free time is nobodies business.
N.A.L., but it’s not unprecedented for such language claiming ownership of work that you do off work hours (as long as they employ you) to be in your employment contract or such.
If this is accurate, then you should be fine, but the app would be considerd a “work for hire” if you used any company resources anywhere and it’s reasonably within the “domain of employment”. (Telco company with equipment tracking IP makes logical sense. Telco company with household recipe tracking IP is sus.)
That includes a work laptop used at home or on business travel, or making any commits and pushes using company networks, including VPNs.
During my time in the tech industry my personal rule is “never create anything on my spare time that benefit or may benefit the employer”. The reasoning is your company can pull a Microsoft loophole of “they have first rights to your work unless you talk to HR”. Its one of the many reasons most folks avoid Microsoft as even non-salary employees run the risk of their opensource stuff being Azure-d.
Yeah, since you haven’t used any company resources, only reasonable way for such claim to be actionable is nonstandard clauses in your employment contract.
They do exist, but usually at tech behemoths. Its usually massive overreach, but if you sign it, you should not be suprised then.
You should look there first. Also how is you app licensed?
Further question is, how would your employer even know about your app? Did you deploy it internally?
Well, my personal thought here would be - every time you sing a written document, do read it. Take your time, but do it. There is no way back basically.
Although I don’t know what position you signed to, but here is wording from a few agreements I’ve signed as a software developer:
All of the solution developed by you during contract work for the xyz is intellectual property of the company.
You are not allowed to develop the same solution for a different customer (how I remember that phrasing).
And there are quite a few more (pages), which make sure that if you developed something during the work time, work resources… and quite possibly inspired by problems, experienced during work tasks, that can be treated as such.
But I’m not really sure about the ISP. Doubt they have such lawyer departments to write the rules.
People and (especially big) companies put all kinds of things into contracts all the time, even just to intimidate the other party. Doesn’t mean it’s enforceable though.
This depends on your contract with your employer. It’s possible that they can claim IP rights to some of the components in the app that you wrote, and thus claim ownership of the entire app. Or they might not. You should probably talk with a lawyer, and have your original contract with the company ready to scrutinize. I’ve known of at least one person that I worked with where the company claimed ownership of an app he was developing with some other people in their spare time, and had nothing to do with the work the company was doing. It was a long, drawn out process that he probably could have eventually won, but it wasn’t certain.
The rules might be a little more employee friendly today, but 20 years ago, I’m not sure that was the case.
It depends how general the tool is. If the tool cannot be used anywhere except in you current working environment. Why didn’t do it during your work time.
Usually, I would seperate some generic stuffs into a separated library project. And then create and publish this generic library as open source project publicly, such as on GitHub, so that I can just reference the library.