Ownership of data
siddharth
(Querist) 19 January 2015
This query is : Resolved
Two of my colleague and I designed a product at the firm in which we are working. We expect to get no equity and no influence in the running of the firm. It would be better to quit and develop the product ourselves. No NDA, Non-compete or any such document has been signed. The employment letter has no clauses pertaining to 'company information'
1. Most of the designs were made on a colleague'ss personal computer as the firm's computers could not run the software required. So who has the rights on the material developed on that computer?
2. If we do undertake to start on our own, can we face legal issues about 'idea stealing'? The design would be different but the utility part cannot be changed.
P. Venu
(Expert) 20 January 2015
Legal issues are bound to be there. The outcome depends the facts and circumstances. Why don't you try to negotiate with the firm?
vswaminathan
(Expert) 20 January 2015
To respond (despite having no expertise on the 'special' topic)
Ostensibly, the query is on a dicey subject, replete with complexities galore. From a pragmatic viewpoint, one needs no ‘expert’, and more so, require a law expert, so as look to for an 'opinion'.
As presumably the ‘idea’ has a value, which could be turned into money, even common sense should tell, issues could not be ruled out; and in any case, not taken to be inevitable. All the more, should the conceived idea, infer-ably now in a nascent stage, happens to be successfully evolved and given a final shape of a ‘developed product’, so as to have a marketable value.
For a purely pragmatic but academic guidance, any amount of useful material on the vexing but brain numbing topic of ‘intellectual property rights’ is available in public domain, simply for an intelligent search of it. One such noted material is here >‘Patently transparent and easily accessible’(Busiessline)
No need, therefore, to add that, in the context herein, self-help (-enlightenment), in preference to any external guide. is the best to primarily go by, ideally depend.
Rajendra K Goyal
(Expert) 20 January 2015
Legal issue may come. You have to defend on merits.
siddharth
(Querist) 20 January 2015
We will start negotiating soon but see not much hope. The firm is quite mismanaged and not very transparent. The financials of the firm are also not so good. So it makes sense that we do leave the firm. The idea was developed by us independently with no technical inputs from the owner of the firm.
No prototype has been developed yet and things are still in the design stage. In the absence of any NDA, or non-compete or any IPR process/document in place, does the firm have legal rights over what people are doing with the access to the information? The employment agreement mentions nothing of this sort and it is the only document we have signed with the company.
T. Kalaiselvan, Advocate
(Expert) 22 January 2015
You will be running a risk of facing the music of law if the firm decides to proceed against you for stealing the company's information or formula, so better negotiate and arrive at a compromised situation or discard the idea and develop a similar patent on your own computer which may not be disputed. After all it is reportedly a product designed by you, hence you may know the technical details as well to develop a similar one.
