Re: Federal Court on source code ownership
Daniel Pittman <[email protected]>
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Alan L Tyree <[email protected]> writes: > Some Sluggers might be interested in this. The Federal Court has made > it clear that a consultant (non-employee) who is commissioned to write > a computer program is not required to turn over the source code unless > the contract specifically requires it. This isn't a new situation in law, but it is nice to see it ratified and supported in court. This has always been one of the "gotchas" for outsourcing: many managers, who were not aware that ownership of code by contractors differs from ownership of code by employees, made a sad and costly discovery... This is the case in much of the world, by the way, and has hurt people before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotline_Communications Regards, Daniel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html