Ownership of Code

[TomGibbons]

Okay basically, during my employment at the company I worked for, I wrote a website in ASP. Fair enough, I wrote it there so it's owned by them. Now, I wrote the whole thing again in my own time at home during my holiday. I wrote it in ASP.NET so it's not the same product. I was the network admin there at the time and I put my version of the site on the network. I resigned and they're asking for my code.

Where do I stand?

[wossname]

I resigned and they're asking for my code.

Where do I stand?

They are asking for WHICH code, the ASP or ASP.Net?

They cannot ask you for your .Net code because it is your intellectual property. However, you might be in contravention of company copyright if you use the same ideas in a new program. This is a tricky area. How similar is the .net version to the old one? Do you use the same name, libraries, data access technology?? If the company patents a technology that you wrote then you can't ever use it again now you've left.

But that is how it appears to me I am not a lawyer

[Merrion]

Give them the code.
HR departments talk to each other a lot and if you have a cloud hanging over you at a previous employer you will find future employment harder to come by.

[TomGibbons]

They're asking for the .NET code. They always had the original code. In terms of data access technology, they both connect to the SQL server. I think that's it.

They're saying that all work carried out for the company during my employment is owned by the company. But this work wasn't carried out for the company. It was carried out for me as a personal project. But I used the site at work. So it's a tough one.

I'm not concerned about HR trying to dirty my reputation or anything like that.

[wossname]

You could take out all the juicy bits of code and fob them off with a buggy mess. Because it is up to you to say how far completed the program is right?

[TomGibbons]

Okay, our solicitor reckons I'm in the right. So I'm trying to find someone who has more knowledge of this kind of thing.

Oh what fun

[BodwadUK]

Did you sign a non disclosure agreement saying all code was theres including any similar projects

If not then its your because they have no right to the software unless it was written in there time and under their pay

Thats how I understand it anyway

[crptcblade]

Whoever wanted the code, stab them in the throat.

[JPicasso]

It's hard to understand the behavior of some of you brits.

It's one thing to complety copy your companies intellectual property, even with a different language,
but you went ahead with posting your result on the company server.
Why wouldn't they think that stuff you posted on their servers was theirs?

I say not only stab him in the throat, go after his family too.

[dglienna]

Putting it on their server may have been a mistake. Would have been better to do a personal web site. You would have to prove that you wrote it on your time off, and installed it on your time off, and used it on your time off. Even if you did, it would be hard to prove. Get a lawyer, and see what he says.

[wossname]

Its only a website when all's said and done, let it go. Start something new, something that will blow them out of the water.

[NotLKH]

Okay, our solicitor reckons I'm in the right. So I'm trying to find someone who has more knowledge of this kind of thing.

Oh what fun

Let me get this straight.
Your company has Its own Solicitor?
Or is she just for the upper management?