Re: copyright assignment

[kevq-ml <kevq-ml at banana dot demon dot co dot uk>]

In message <199805221611.JAA09366@pacific.pgroup.com> Larry wrote:

> ----- Forwarded message from Geoffrey Noer -----
> [...]
> (http://www.cygnus.com/misc/gnu-win32).  Note that if your changes
> are more than a few lines, you will probably need to send in a
> copyright assignment form and a disclaimer from your employer.[snip]
> [...]
> ----- End of forwarded message from Geoffrey Noer -----
> 
> [snip] But you're saying that I also need to send a copyright
> assignment form and a disclaimer with this modified source code? [snip]

As I understand it, when you work for a company, usually your contract
of employment automatically assigns copyright of all work related to
their business that you produce, whether at work or at home,
to your employer, unless you have written agreement to the contrary.
Actual details and specifics vary (considerably) according to the contract,
of course.  It's common, if you're employed as a software
engineer/programmer, that the relevant clauses would include work on
GPL'ed software.

What this means, is that to work on GPL'ed software (assuming you're bound
by one of these contracts that assigns copyright to the employer), you
would need to get agreement from your employer first to waive their
claim to copyright on your work.

Note that if you're not under any such contract, then there's no problem.
For example, if your line of work is unrelated to the software industry
and your code writing was done in personal time, then your contract of
employment is unlikely to assign copyright on your software to your
employer.

Another situation where the waiver might not be necessary is if your
employer asked you to do the work (i.e. as part of your job).  They
have then implicitly waived their rights as they would have to agree
to the GPL for you to do the work.

Contracts of employment should be checked carefully.

In practice, an employer is unlikely to make any claim, as the result
would simply be that the code you wrote would not be included in the
GPL'ed product - they wouldn't suffer any financial or other loss by
waiving their copyright claim.

Kev.

Disclaimer - I'm not a lawyer, and copyright legislation is not trivial.
Get proper legal advice, don't just rely on anything I say!

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