Proprietary software for Linux

[Richard Watts]

On Tuesday 30 November 1999, Bruce Perens
<bruce at perens.com> wrote:

>From: Mark Wells <mark at pc-intouch.com>
>> Anyway, transfers of copyright don't require a formal
>> contract--work-for-hire is an obvious counterexample.
>
>When you work for hire, your work is in general owned by the person who
>hired you to do the work, unless you negociate otherwise. This is _not_ a
>transfer of copyright - you never did own it in this case.
 
But watch out for international differences - in the UK, since the
1988 Act (actually, since sometime in the 60s, AIR) if you are
employed by someone, the copyright in work you do in the course of
employment belongs to the employer, but if you are a contractor, the
copyright belongs to you, and you must explicitly assign it[1].

One thing that was mentioned in lectures on Monday was that the US
appears to be dabbling in inevitable disclosure in confidentiality
cases, and it occurs (to me, not the lecturer!) that one might well
construe working on free software as giving rise to inevitable
disclosure of trade secrets. I don't think this would fly in a UK
court (but IANAL), but the US is a strange and distant land :-).


Richard. 
[1] And in view of the fact that the UK protects functional
expression and has precedent in unintentional copying, I believe that
this is a stunningly stupid thing to do.