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From: gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Work for Hire contracts
Message-ID: <104700047@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 19 Aug 88 15:04:00 GMT
References: <3110@sdsu.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:sdsu.UUCP:3110:p.cs.uiuc.edu:104700047:000:1100
Nf-From: p.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies    Aug 19 10:04:00 1988


> 1:08 pm 8/18/88 by johnson@c10sd1.StPaul.NCR.COM in comp.sys.mac.programmer
>
>I have also heard of a case where an employee developed a product in his
>spare time (at the office), on company equipment.  After he began selling this
>software himself he was fired and the company sued to prevent him from 
>selling this product.  The court ruled that since the company had not 
>planned the product (and thus the employee had not been asigned it as a 
>task), nor was it impacted by the use of its equipment, that the company 
>had no right to the product and the employee continued to make a merry 
>profit.

This is probably the exception, not the rule.  These days, PC's are
cheap enough that there is little excuse for using company hardware to
develop a product.  If the company had been clever, they might have
sued for the rights to the product, which they probably would have
won.

Let the programmer beware...

Don Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois
1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801      
ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu   UUCP: {uunet,ihnp4,harvard}!uiucdcs!gillies