SRL Archive - Discussions & Debates

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.

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.

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

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

From: Main
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.

yes, but that was for profit (direct profit).

From: Main
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.

From: Flight
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-is-a-stolen-concept-of-mark-zuckerberg-its-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.

"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.

From: Neznam

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..

From: 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.)

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.

@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??

From: Neznam
@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… :duh:

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.

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.

Agree with Jason.

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.

From: Creath
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!"

From: Jason2gs
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.

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.
[INDENT]Rich friend: What is your idea?[/INDENT]
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%.
[INDENT]Rich friend: wow, that sounds great! When are you going to build the car?[/INDENT]
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!
[INDENT]Rich friend: Oh right, yeah, I forgot to mention. I already build one, BMW signed me a 1 trillion dollar contract![/INDENT]'
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.

From: Brandon
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.

From: Kyle Undefined
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?

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…

From: Jason2gs
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.

From: cause
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.

From: Kyle Undefined
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.

From: Kyle Undefined
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.

These seem contradictory…

You're confusing my poor head.

From: Kyle Undefined
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.



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.

Absolutely correct. Only applies to work done on "THEIR" Computers. Though there is a slight problem here as well.

Lets say you "Started" a project at work. You cannot take that code home and work on it and keep it. If you do take it home, the property is still theirs and thus you cannot use it for anything other than what they want you to use it for :c As such, you're working at home for no pay lol.

There's also another slight clause. Lets say you started a project at home and you tell your boss this project can fix his shit storm. They let you work on that code at work and at home.

That code is only yours up to what you wrote outside of letting the company know despite the fact that you started it first. From the minute you let them no, that extra portion/work done is no longer yours lol unless you copyrighted the starting portion then they have no choice but to respect your wishes.

It's really very complicated when it comes to code/ideas as per other things such as items.

This idea stealing is possibly one of the best arguments against open vs. closed source for personal projects as if it's closed, anyone who attempts to use or leak will get in a storm if you target them legally. Then again open source can have the same consequences but are a lot harder to prove that it is yours as that person is free to edit it even under the public GNU licenses such as the ones Benland and Wizzup uses. SOMETIMES these licenses do not hold water in court as seen here on TV once or twice. Other times, they are a great way to protect your code.

Seems like the moral of Kyles Story is, if you want to keep some bit of code, don't work on it at work :/

From: Jason2gs
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.

Ownership? No. Credit? Yes. Person A is absolutely entitled to at least a little bit of credit for the software. I was actually hung up on this question 15 minutes distinguishing the difference between ownership and credit. >.< Derp on me.

If you put in 100% of the work, you are entitled to 100% of the product. Even with that being said, though, it couldn't possibly hurt us as a species if we learned to share a little. But now I'm preaching.

Good question. It was thought provoking.

Being that I am often 'Person A' I would have to say that A does, in fact, have some implicit ownership of the creation. In my case, I'm generally delegating an idea I had to someone with time to implement it. Often, that person would not have created the thing on their own, and therefore can't be said to have created it on their own. Basically, inspiration matters. In the scientific community this is respected, however I find in industry it is often not.

From: d_blan
Ownership? No. Credit? Yes. Person A is absolutely entitled to at least a little bit of credit for the software. I was actually hung up on this question 15 minutes distinguishing the difference between ownership and credit. >.< Derp on me.

If you put in 100% of the work, you are entitled to 100% of the product. Even with that being said, though, it couldn't possibly hurt us as a species if we learned to share a little. But now I'm preaching.

Good question. It was thought provoking.

However, say without Peron A's concept there would have been no work produced by Person B. In which case 100% of Person B's entitlements are directly derived from the idea which was passed on from Person A

From: Brandon
Absolutely correct. Only applies to work done on "THEIR" Computers. Though there is a slight problem here as well.

Lets say you "Started" a project at work. You cannot take that code home and work on it and keep it. If you do take it home, the property is still theirs and thus you cannot use it for anything other than what they want you to use it for :c As such, you're working at home for no pay lol.

There's also another slight clause. Lets say you started a project at home and you tell your boss this project can fix his shit storm. They let you work on that code at work and at home.

That code is only yours up to what you wrote outside of letting the company know despite the fact that you started it first. From the minute you let them no, that extra portion/work done is no longer yours lol unless you copyrighted the starting portion then they have no choice but to respect your wishes.

It's really very complicated when it comes to code/ideas as per other things such as items.

This idea stealing is possibly one of the best arguments against open vs. closed source for personal projects as if it's closed, anyone who attempts to use or leak will get in a storm if you target them legally. Then again open source can have the same consequences but are a lot harder to prove that it is yours as that person is free to edit it even under the public GNU licenses such as the ones Benland and Wizzup uses. SOMETIMES these licenses do not hold water in court as seen here on TV once or twice. Other times, they are a great way to protect your code.

This is all dependent on your individual contract/Terms of employment signed upon commencement of work at the company. Some are awesome, and give you free rights to everything you've started at home, unrelated to anything at work. Others, like my company, claim ownership to EVERY PIECE OF CODE you write while under their employment.

This becomes a massive pain in the arse coding uni assignments, on the off-chance you come up with some amazing new way of solving something, and your company finds out about it and wants to monetize the idea.

From: Brandon
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..

Lol of course you don't own anything. That's why the company hires you, to develop and create for them and their intellectual property.

If you develop the cure for cancer for a drug company, just hope you get a big bonus.

Many employees are worthless and the company doesn't get their money out of them, but the ones that create and make big things put them in the black.

From: smurg
Lol of course you don't own anything. That's why the company hires you, to develop and create for them and their intellectual property.

If you develop the cure for cancer for a drug company, just hope you get a big bonus.

Many employees are worthless and the company doesn't get their money out of them, but the ones that create and make big things put them in the black.

I think you need to read what I said again. Work done even if it isn't for the company, is their property.

Lets say you finshed whatever you had to do.. You decided to code some shit at work. That code isn't yours if it's done on their machines.

From: Brandon
I think you need to read what I said again. Work done even if it isn't for the company, is their property.

Lets say you finshed whatever you had to do.. You decided to code some shit at work. That code isn't yours if it's done on their machines.

I read the first portion where you stated he wrote code for the company for the project, which I replied to.

I don't see why you would write your own code on the clock at work. That's time theft anyways and they are paying you to work. So if that work is on something personal, then why wouldn't they own it (they're paying you for your time)?