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Thread: Intellectual property, etc.

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    Default Intellectual property, etc.

    Person A has an idea for some software. Person A convinces Person B to write it. Does Person A have any justified claim to part ownership of the software?

    Assuming no contracts were signed, there was no gentleman's agreement, and no one was explicitly or implicitly hired.

    My argument would be: no, the effort that goes into making a thing should be used to dictate ownership, not the extraneous factors that caused it to be made. Nothing was stolen from Person A, and he could have contracted someone to write it if he wanted to. Person B rightfully has full ownership of the software.
    Last edited by Jason2gs; 06-09-2012 at 01:13 AM.

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    I agree. I'm a firm believer of "Ideas come through you, not from you" and it seems so silly to me that an idea can be owned by someone; especially if they didn't do anything to bring it into reality.

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    Completely agree, everyone can have wild thoughts and ideas but to bring them to a reality is where it takes talents.

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    unfortunately and fortunately you can't copyright or trademark or patent your software idea.
    Oh Hai Dar

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    Quote Originally Posted by Main View Post
    unfortunately and fortunately you can't copyright or trademark or patent your software idea.
    Uhh this is false. Have you seen the case of Mark Zuckerberg vs. Those two brothers over facebook?

    "The Idea was ours" and thus the court granted them 25 million + another 32 million in the second case with sufficient proof (good description + backup from others).

    They never wrote facebook but sued for the idea. Also facebook is being sued just because their stocks dropped. I think it's fairly safe to say you can get sued for almost anything.

    Geohot sued for hacking his own PS3 that he bought.
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    yes, but that was for profit (direct profit).
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    Quote Originally Posted by Main View Post
    yes, but that was for profit (direct profit).
    Well I imagine the software Jason is talking about will be for profit, so he might face similar ordeals.

    Brandon, what kind of proof would they need to provide to make a case "The idea was ours"? Must be pretty solid to make an official case, let alone win it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Flight View Post
    Well I imagine the software Jason is talking about will be for profit, so he might face similar ordeals.

    Brandon, what kind of proof would they need to provide to make a case "The idea was ours"? Must be pretty solid to make an official case, let alone win it.
    Well various tech sites have the posts on it.. The first google result: http://www.gadgetcage.com/facebook-i...my-idea/10980/


    It's the stupid twins that said "My idea got taken away from me in 3 months". Iunno it was said that the provided sufficient proof against Mark Zuckerberg. Apparently they were all friends and what not so I guess that was probably it :S

    It's weird that it all only came out when FB went from 0 to 50b. I remember reading it on Engadget or something.
    Last edited by Brandon; 06-09-2012 at 03:51 AM.
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    "Just because you have an idea, does not mean its yours" I cant remember where I heard this quote but apparently so many companies, softwares, etc etc are built on this. People are cheated out of their own inventions/ideas all the time. Like it was said you can get sued over anything.

    Here's an example...

    Barbie company sued Bratz owner. Apparenlty the idea for Bratz was original BUT the person who came up with it was a current employee of Barbie's company and it some how makes this their product.

    So this guy thought up this new "toy" but because he was still their employee, its their product? How does that make sense??

    Dont know if this was settled or what happened, but I remember reading about this and thinking how ridiculous it was.

    If you've got an idea that could be worth something, make sure you have all the legals and rights before ever consulting someone else to work with, because they could easily claim this idea, their own.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Neznam View Post
    So this guy thought up this new "toy" but because he was still their employee, its their product? How does that make sense??
    This brings me to another point. A teacher saw me programming some bad things and told us all a story and made me stand infront of the whole class. Guess what the story was? Almost the same thing.

    His friend (My teacher's friend) was a programmer for HP. He had to write a program for some big project or so the story goes. He was the only one who knew the code of the program inside out. He backdoored the program to have job security. Little did he know, anything you program or do or make or think of or invent while working for a company, is THEIRS! So the code was not his to backdoor. He got fired for some silly reason and went home and activated the backdoor and screwed them. That guy is sitting in jail and my teacher visits him pretty often. He was jailed not for the backdoor of the program but for "STEALING" code that is not his. In other words, he used THEIR code at home and accessed their servers even though he wrote the whole thing.


    Nothing is ever yours. You do something under your company's contract, it belongs to THEM. Now the argument here is that this "Idea" isn't theirs but I guess it is even without a contract lol. So, Ideas can be copyrighted under circumstances..
    Last edited by Brandon; 06-09-2012 at 03:58 AM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wikipedia
    In 2004, ConnectU filed a lawsuit against Facebook alleging that creator Mark Zuckerberg had broken an oral contract with it. The suit alleged that Zuckerberg had copied ConnectU's idea[35][36] and illegally used source code intended for the website Zuckerberg was hired to develop.[26][37][38][39]
    So, at least in the eyes of the court, those were sufficient grounds.

    Regardless, I intended this this more as a discussion on morals, not legality. (Though it seems fairly evident how the verdict will lean.)

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    I personally feel that if you are currently working for a company and you develop something while being employed by the company, that company has all rights to your product. While they SHOULD allow you royalties on said product, this is not always the case, and that's where morality and legality meet. Morally it's incorrect for a company to not offer royalties on something you create, however, it is perfectly legal for them not to because it was created by you, for them and so you have already essentially been awarded for your work.

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    @Brandon

    That is pretty pathetic. I cant understand instances such as those. If you have an idea and can start your own company but because you worked at the time for another company, then the idea is theirs? It just doesnt make sense.

    Even IF you quit and start your own company, this new idea is STILL your previous' company's because well you probably thought of it while working for them and its theirs... like how is this right??

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    Quote Originally Posted by Neznam View Post
    @Brandon

    That is pretty pathetic. I cant understand instances such as those. If you have an idea and can start your own company but because you worked at the time for another company, then the idea is theirs? It just doesnt make sense.

    Even IF you quit and start your own company, this new idea is STILL your previous' company's because well you probably thought of it while working for them and its theirs... like how is this right??
    And this is why people don't like to trust big business...

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    Ok I just realized something.

    Facebook case had a contract in place, and mark was voiding the contract and made facebook while had similar terms.

    But i am 99% sure that if you just had a talk, and made something yourself. You are not legally liable for anything and it is their fault for telling you. Also if you literallyt went and made a software that is a direct rip of another software but without using their codes, they can't sue you.
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    The whole intellectual property issue is screwed. If you have an idea to do something, keep it to yourself and get it copyrighted when you are done. If you do stuff under a company, they get the credit. If you invent something in a university, the university gets credit. The only way to get credit yourself is by doing it all alone, which requires a lot of cash obviously.
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    Agree with Jason.
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    The Facebook case was the first thing that came to mind reading this. In the eyes of the government, apparently this does constitute payment.

    I honestly think it should. Any software developer can code a project, it doesn't take any vision or great idea. If someone comes up with a brilliant and unique idea and asks someone to code it for them, that person is stealing if they take the idea and claim it as theirs.

    The person would be foolish to do it without a contract of some sort, but it's similar to an architect designing the perfect building and the contractor taking all the credit.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Creath View Post
    The Facebook case was the first thing that came to mind reading this. In the eyes of the government, apparently this does constitute payment.

    I honestly think it should. Any software developer can code a project, it doesn't take any vision or great idea. If someone comes up with a brilliant and unique idea and asks someone to code it for them, that person is stealing if they take the idea and claim it as theirs.

    The person would be foolish to do it without a contract of some sort, but it's similar to an architect designing the perfect building and the contractor taking all the credit.
    A challenger appears.

    I'm a bit set aback that you equate software developers to ordinary blue-collar contractual workers. But that aside, it'd most definitely be wrong of the software developer to claim that the idea was theirs, and they ought to provide some dedication (such as an author might in a book). But why do they owe them anything more than this? It was the developer's intelligence, time, and effort that went into project.

    I think it'd be closer to Average Joe saying to an architect, "I think you should design a building in the shape of a spaceship." and the architect going, "You know what, that isn't a bad idea." Then, when the architect does design the building, Average Joe contests, "Hey, you couldn't have designed that without me, I want half ownership!"

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jason2gs View Post
    I think it'd be closer to Average Joe saying to an architect, "I think you should design a building in the shape of a spaceship." and the architect going, "You know what, that isn't a bad idea." Then, when the architect does design the building, Average Joe contests, "Hey, you couldn't have designed that without me, I want half ownership!"
    The analogy you've made here is great. I've always hated the fact that people overlook the role of logic in all of this. So much logic and system management goes into an idea that is much more complex in nature than the idea itself, it's ridiculous to equate an idea's importance with physically creating it.

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    Depends a bit on the situation. Let me give an example, I don't need feedback that the idea is ridiculous.

    You: I got such a great idea for making tons of money and changing the future.
    Rich friend: What is your idea?
    You: Cars running on jellyfish! It is the best energy source in the world. I started my research 6 months ago and it seems perfect. Already calculated it through and this will reduce the fuel prices with 50%.
    Rich friend: wow, that sounds great! When are you going to build the car?
    You: Well I got a great place to build it, I even already got some engineers, but the sad thing is I will only be able to start it when the bank will give me a loan. They are positive, but they want to research it by themselves first. Might take a few months..

    Two months later:

    You: I finally got the money to build the car!
    Rich friend: Oh right, yeah, I forgot to mention. I already build one, BMW signed me a 1 trillion dollar contract!
    '
    You:

    I think it depends on the risks the person building the idea has taken compared to yours. In this example, I think it is wrong, and you should get at least 50% of the profit.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Brandon View Post
    This brings me to another point. A teacher saw me programming some bad things and told us all a story and made me stand infront of the whole class. Guess what the story was? Almost the same thing.

    His friend (My teacher's friend) was a programmer for HP. He had to write a program for some big project or so the story goes. He was the only one who knew the code of the program inside out. He backdoored the program to have job security. Little did he know, anything you program or do or make or think of or invent while working for a company, is THEIRS! So the code was not his to backdoor. He got fired for some silly reason and went home and activated the backdoor and screwed them. That guy is sitting in jail and my teacher visits him pretty often. He was jailed not for the backdoor of the program but for "STEALING" code that is not his. In other words, he used THEIR code at home and accessed their servers even though he wrote the whole thing.


    Nothing is ever yours. You do something under your company's contract, it belongs to THEM. Now the argument here is that this "Idea" isn't theirs but I guess it is even without a contract lol. So, Ideas can be copyrighted under circumstances..
    This is why it sucks to be a developer. My old company screwed me over because of the "It's mine since you wrote it here". I've written so many programs and awesome code snippits, but I couldn't take them with me when I decided to leave.

    There are ways to protect yourself from these types of things, but when you work for a company and not a freelancer, it's kind of hard.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kyle Undefined View Post
    This is why it sucks to be a developer. My old company screwed me over because of the "It's mine since you wrote it here". I've written so many programs and awesome code snippits, but I couldn't take them with me when I decided to leave.

    There are ways to protect yourself from these types of things, but when you work for a company and not a freelancer, it's kind of hard.
    They owned any code you wrote while you were employed at the company, or only the code you wrote on company time?

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    Kyle couldn't you claim some of that code your own if you wrote it not on company time? That could be quite hard to prove though...

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jason2gs View Post
    They owned any code you wrote while you were employed at the company, or only the code you wrote on company time?
    Any code, idea, or thought that was produced while employed there is theirs. If I came up with some new idea to solve problems, they own it.

    Quote Originally Posted by cause View Post
    Kyle couldn't you claim some of that code your own if you wrote it not on company time? That could be quite hard to prove though...
    Doesn't matter, I was employed there when I wrote it. I left that company over a year ago, so it doesn't really matter anymore. It just sucks losing all that code that can be used almost anywhere since I wrote it to be dynamic.

    Just to clear things up, this only applies to the code that was on the work machine. Doesn't apply to code that I wrote at home.
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