The Client Wants The Copyright, Is there A difference Price For That?

[DaveM]

Re: The Client Wants The Copyright, Is there A difference Price For That?

Like Brett, but see an attorney. Remember, if the rights were not discussed in front, they are your rights. They would not be drafting a contract/agreement is they thought they had a chance.

Compiling is a great idea. Then all your code is in an aex file and not so easily accessible. I password mine, but not everybody does.

In these matters, I have always sopen to the adversary in a very matter of fact and strong language. Not to be rude or out of place. State your position.

In case you did not figure it out, I am very biased to someones rights when they did the sweat.

Case where it was the other way: friend owns a software company with one main program. A programmer managed to take most of it and reproduce the rest. It is copyrighted. He managed to shut the programmers new company down. It took a year, but got done. The programmer started at the company, learned at the company, got paid to work at the company and used company tools. When he left, he purchased his own(identical) tools.

Another case: programmer worked for a well known in the field software company. He worked at home mostly and came in to make sure his portion of the app was working into the main app. When he left, he used a lot of the code(maybe all) he was paid to develope at another competing company. He was taken to court and he won. He had his own tools, worked on his own, and was paid by the piece. The judge said he got paid for what worked and did not get paid for the parts that did not work. The code belonged to him to do whatever he wished.

There was no written agreement in either case.

Nigel, from now on, maybe a contract in fron t is a good idea?


If they offer a monetary sum, you have a decision. It also means they recognize you have rights.

.

[brett s]

Re: The Client Wants The Copyright, Is there A difference Price For That?

My suggestion is do not allow yourself to be presented with a "fait accompli". The contract they draft will be written to protect their position and not yours. So get hold of it and read it carefully. Strike out those parts that you do not agree with or do not understand. Insert your own parts that protect your rights. Do not sign anything that prevents you from earning a living designing and developing applications.

Add a paragraph that says, in effect, you are free to use any utilized concept, idea, design element, code, logic or formulae in any other application you develop.

A couple of other tips. As far as practicable put all your Alpha Five code into global scripts and only deliver a compiled application to the user. This makes it much more difficult for anyone other than yourself to reverse-engineer the application or to otherwise dissect and re-use its parts. Some recommend you password protect your scripts too, but I personally do not think this is always necessary.

On your application's "About" screen, state the copyright belongs to you: e.g. "Copyright ABC Software Inc". This is more easily done if you do it right from the outset rather than try to introduce it after the event.

In my experience you should sign away the copyright on an application you have developed only in rare circumstances.

[DaveM]

Re: The Client Wants The Copyright, Is there A difference Price For That?

Nigel,

As stated, you could never sell the app or in most cases, a similar app to someone else in that type business.

One rule I live by religeously. I retain rights to ownership and sales. Client has the right to use same for a fee.

Another that is just as important: Never sign a contract drawn up by the other party. There are generally too many pitfalls.

Remember, it is generally less money to you when you work with a client to develope an app. It is also, generally accepted that you took less because you feel there would be future rewards when you finished the app.

Also, no 2 companies will want the exact same application. They will want changes. example: I have sold 24 copies of my app and every one of them are a little different. No one is happy with exactly the same as another company.

You are the programmer and business owner. You have the right to any copyrights on the app you develope. You also have the right to sell the app or rights to use it to anyone you want.

This is all a moot point if your agreement was to give them ownership rights when you entered into your original agreement.

You can check with any attorney and I think he will agree.

Now, if the company you are dealing with purchased the developemant app from alpha and you were on payroll, it belongs to them. My opinion. If you did the work with your own developement alpha program at your own desk in you own business/home, it is yours. If you contracted to do certain things for that company, it could be theirs or yours. It depends on the circumstances.

One thing you do not want to do is sign anything that would keep you from working for one of their competitors. You also don't want to sign anything that would keep you from duplicating(different from copying) anything within the app. Partly why I said have YOUR attorney check or write any agreement.

By refusing to sign their agreement, you are safer than agreeing to sign whatever they give you. If you sign it, you could wind up in court for years if they feel you violated the agreement.

If they wanted rights to the app, they should have discussed that up front.

These are my opinions - I am not a judge. Judges don't always agree with the right side of a situation. They don't always agree with each other.

I would simply express my displeasure in a nice way, take the agreement they gave me and have an attorney look it over. Have him either rewrite it or return it as unacceptible. Thatr would depend on your understanding of the agreement. Be careful that you don't get your hands tied up.

This got too long!

In summary - I would simply explain that I never give up a copyright to any app I develope, so any agreement would be a waste of time. If they have a problem with that, they will get over it when they need you again.

These are all opinions of mine and not to be used as anything else. I have dealt with contracts for many years. I have lost a few, but won many more in court. I am not an attorney, but sure have hired a few.

as an aside, all my apps have something in them that is timed and mostly hidden that may explode the app one day. Any other programmer working on the app could get a surprise or two. At the very least, password protect some of you scripts and functions so others will not be able to change them later. If I were having a thought that someone was getting close to replacing me on my app to work more on it, I would imediately password protect my work and more. That is me, but probably not you.



.

[nigeldude]

Re: The Client Wants The Copyright, Is there A difference Price For That?

Wow, seems its more delicate than I thought.

I think their reason is they dont want it to reach their competitors hands. I'm lost at:
1) No, I have the copyright, and may sell it to another company in this industry, or
2) well you did pay me to create it, and work with me to weed out all the bugs. So you are entitled to this unique custom built app.

I have no idea which angle to approach it from.
So I'm thinking of a 3rd optin: they are a long time client of miones, and I do want to keep them happy.

How would you aproach such a request? Thanks for your time and assistance.

[Bob Arbuthnot]

Re: The Client Wants The Copyright, Is there A difference Price For That?

Nigel,

I'm not a lawyer (pharmacist, actually) but it seems that if you sell them the copyright on the application you developed that you are giving up your right to ever sell the app again, and they could then sell your app as their own.

Is that what you want?

Bob Arbuthnot

BTW it's possible that any lawyers that frequent this forum would be reluctant to give their opinion on this because they would incur liability in doing so.

[nigeldude]

A liittle advice pleas.

In the A5 help it states
"You retain the copyright on your application files. Alpha Software retains the copyright on the Alpha Five Runtime files."

There is an app that I created for a client, now close to the end of the warranty period that I gave, I have been told that they are drafting up a contract for me to review and sign to legally give them the copyright of the app.
That's not a topic that I have ever given much thought to.
However I remember hearing hearing a programmer said once, that to give the client copyright of a particular app that he made for them, they would have to pay like $50,000 dollars for it, whereas the original price was $10,000

Is this the usual routine? do you multiply the price in several folds to give the client the copyright?

I have a meeting with them in 3hrs, and I'm not sure how to respond. Would appreciate a bit of guidance on this topic.