Who owns IPR?
Easy answer, at least that what I though. Well after a lot of research it seem that it isn't as cut and dry as it may first appear.
It all appears to heavily depend on two things, your contract and you employment definition.
For example, if you are employed as a cleaner and in passing you notice that the chairs used by software engineer could be improved by adding a bin to the arm of the chair. You then go and build a prototype, which the company then uses, pays for 1,000 of them to be built. The cleaner is given a pat on the back and a new mop. It would be easy to assume, he's working and employed by the company, so the IPR belongs to the company. And you would be wrong. In all instances of creating something the IPR belongs to the individual who created it. If employed, then the IPR transfers automatically only if the individual was employed specifically to design chairs, or there was a clause in the contract which states anything you develop whilst in employed belongs to the company.
So the second part gets the company out of jail. Yes and no. If the cleaner had developed a new type of mop, then yes. However, the chair has nothing at all to do with his job. His employment contract states he was employed as a cleaner and his duties stipulated his tasks. So the IPR is his, and as such, the company has to agree a settlement to use the IPR.
There is a lot more to this, legal understanding of employment, your duties etc. But what the law does protect is the individuals rights, which cannot be override by catch all employment contract phrases such as "or what ever work or role we deem fit at the time".
Now move this to a seemingly less clear area. You are employed to carry out data entry into a spreadsheet. Your employment contract states your duties as compelling the data, maybe speaking to companies, sending forms etc. However, you have a keen interest in software development, an in your own time you develope some code to make your task easier. The company you work for, see this and passes it on to others in the company to use, in by doing so it save the company £100,000 per year.
The company has a software development team, a whole IT department etc. Who could have developed this. They could have equally offered you employment within those departments seeing your potential. However, they choose to keep you on a low salaries data entry position.
In this instance, you possess the IPR to the code, if you decided to take it to use in another job, it cannot be prevented. However, by allowing the company to use the code while you were employed there, it could be seen as your permission for them to continue to use it, unless you stipulate anywhere and at anytime, about any licencing restrictions. These could.be free fair use while employed etc.
If you own the IPR, how much could you be paid for it? This is a fair question, and it's about worth. How.much did it save the company, how much time did it take to develop and if you were asked by the company to make changes or update the code, in your own time. You could quantify you time at a rate of £40 per hour, which would be an average. If the company save £100,000 then anything from 1 to 5% would also seem fair.
To ensure when you write code and its not something you are employed to do, make your IPR case stronger by adding a license agreement.
