Do I have the right to get a copy of the source code I wrote during an internship? (Germany) I did an internship in a small software company in Germany and wrote mainly two programs, one which is just an example to learn the language which has no monetary value and another one which could be sold by the company if they finish a few remaining parts. Now the internship is over and I asked my boss for a copy of the source code I personally wrote myself so that I can look up what I learned and have an example for this programming language. I have no intent to republish the code in any way, including making it open source or selling the code itself or a product made from it. It's just the first stuff I wrote in this language and I would like to keep it as template and example. He declined my request and said that they never give away their source code. A quick online research taught me that if a program was written at the employer's disposition, they have the exclusive and full market rights. In my opinion, this sounds like they have the power to decide what I may do with it (e.g. prohibit selling or publishing), but it does not really say anything about the right to own a copy for personal educational purposes. Other sources also said that the author always holds the inalienable (except through descent) copyright, so I as non-lawyer would interpret this in a way that grants me at least the right to own a copy, even if I may not republish it in any way. My internship contract did not say anything about ownership and usage rights of the code I write. I'm not going to fight for this, but I'm interested in my theoretical rights as employed (or internship) programmer. Do I have the right to obtain a copy of all source codes I purely wrote myself? What rules are there concerning this situation?
Germany may be different, however in the United States this would be considered work-for-hire and the employer would be the rightful owner of the source code. Regardless of jurisdiction, and from a more practical point of view, you are better off not having a copy of the source code. Using it as reference or example in the future could easily turn into (unintentional) copyright infringement. If, in the future, you write code you would like to be able to freely keep and reuse in any project, make sure the owner/employer licenses it using something like the BSD, MIT, or ISC license.
What happened is that you created a legal mess. You are obviously on the hook for copyright infringement. The maintainers of the project will scramble to replace your code with newly written code. They will likely ask your company which code they are complaining about - that puts your company into the problematic situation that they shouldn't identify code that isn't theirs, that it will be hard to sue for infringing code when they didn't give the project maintainers a chance to fix it, and that everything they identify will be replaced. Since it is your actions that caused the trouble, anyone suffering damages from your actions can sue you.
It is mildly hard to say. First, one has to determine if he was an employee hired to do something like invent the WWW. He "spent time" at CERN, but was an independent contractor in his first period (1980), then took up a fellowship in 1984. "Fellowship" is generally not an "employment" relationship in the relevant sense, and academics are rarely "employees" in the common law work-for-hire sense. It is reported that he "began creating the software and standards for the web on his own as an informal project within CERN". So if anyone holds IP rights (to what?), it would be him. Given where CERN is, it is not self-evident whose copyright law would be applicable. He reports that he wrote the code in CERN Building 31, which appears to be in France, though CERN appears to be in Switzerland (CERN is, in fact, in France and Switzerland). Article 17 of Swiss copyright law says Where a computer program has been created under an employment contract in the course of discharging professional duties or fulfilling contractual obligations, the employer alone shall be entitled to exercise the exclusive rights of use. and otherwise, "work for hire" is not an applicable concept under Swiss law. France, which has the same basic droit d'auteur concept, also have the software exception in Intellectual Property Code Article L113-9: Unless otherwise provided by statutory provision or stipulation, the economic rights in the software and its documentation created by one or more employees in the execution of their duties or following the instructions given by their employer shall be the property of the employer and he exclusively shall be entitled to exercise them. In either venue there is a very narrow path for CERN to hold the copyright to the original software, one that is not likely to match the facts of Berners-Lee's relationship with CERN. It is also true that CERN created a version of web software (the usable version), which was released into the public domain Apr. 30 1993 (p1, p2). It is likewise known that he approved of, and propagated the release of the IP that we associate with the WWW into the public domain. The idea underlying the web is not subject to copyright protection (the text of the proposal would be), but the original code that he wrote would be. It is unknown what relationship exists between that original code any current code, but it highly unlikely that any current code copies original code. Further speculation about the relationship between the original code and anything that exists now would have to be addressed in a History of Computing SE (if there were such a thing). As for patents, since he did not patent the method, it is ipso facto unprotected and out in the open. From the legal POV, the world wide web is not a single thing, so it is meaningless to ask who has dominion over it.
Hypothetically speaking, if a program doesn't come with a EULA, does that mean someone in possession of it (who isn't the owner) would be breaking the law if they used it? If the copy on the stick was lawfully made with permission of the copyright holder, then you can lawfully use the software. Someone who lawfully comes into possession of a lawfully made copy of the software (that was not a backup) has the right to use that software in the ordinary way. For example if someone found a USB stick lying on the ground and it had software on it but no EULA, could they use the software? Maybe, but it would be hard for them to know whether they could or not. It might be a backup. It might be an unlawful copy. There was a case where a person found a CD in the trash that was clearly an original. The package had a shrink wrap agreement, but he found the CD without the package. The court held that he had every right to use the software on the CD (since it was a lawfully-made copy and not a backup) and was not bound by the EULA (since he hadn't opened the package). But he was very fortunate in being able to demonstrate these facts.
Ultimately, the issue presented is as much a technical one as a legal one. You can protect software written in a programming language that you don't own the rights to via copyright. Indeed, the vast majority of copyrighted programs are written in programming languages not owned by the author of the copyrighted work. You can't meaningfully protect software that is subject to a creative commons or MIT license for commercial purposes. The question then becomes, is the material you want to protect simply software written in an open source programming language, in which can you can protect the software, but not the underlying language, or is it a mere implementation of open source software that is not so transformative that its character as open source software (or a derivative work of open source software) is overcome. This would be a question of fact for a fact finding at a trial and would require considerable technical expertise and understanding to evaluate. I know so many startups and platforms are written with open source software so I'm sure there is a clear answer to this but I can't seem to find one on the web. There aren't a lot of clear precedents governing where the line should be drawn. Software of any kind you would recognize as such has only existed for about 50 years. Open source software has only existed for 20-30 years depending upon how you count it. And, open source software has only had widespread commercial use for an even shorter time period. This is an incredibly short among of time in terms of legal history, and it doesn't help that business to business copyright litigation doesn't take place at all in state courts and makes up a pretty small share of the overall federal court docket. And most of the copyright cases that are brought in the federal courts are very simple ones. For example, as of the year 2015, most copyright lawsuits in the U.S. merely alleged that anonymous Internet users downloaded pornography without permission to do so: [T]he adult website Malibu Media is a prodigious enforcer of its copyrights. According to law professor Matthew Sag of Loyola University in Chicago, Malibu alone was responsible for nearly 40 percent of all copyright filings in federal court in 2015. Litigation against anonymous downloaders, by Malibu and other copyright enforcers, made up nearly 60 percent of the federal copyright docket last year. In 2016, there were fewer than 4000 copyright infringement cases filed in the entire U.S. (in all media). And, the percentage of civil cases that go to trial at all in the federal courts (rather than being resolved by a settlement or default judgment) is very small to start with, with many of the cases that are resolved on the merits not appealed. There are fewer than 400 appeals per year, nationwide, in copyright, patent and trademark cases combined, and patent and trademark cases make up and outsized share of that total because the amount of money at stake is higher on average in patent and trademark cases than in copyright cases, and many copyright cases involve copyrights in media other than software. Maybe there are a dozen or two software copyright appeals a year these days. The figures from the last few years, however, are much, much higher than they have been historically, particularly in the area of software copyrights, which is why the case law is so thin on so many more sophisticated areas of software copyright law.
On what grounds would you sue? Contract Well, I think that you would struggle to find the necessary elements (see What is a contract and what is required for them to be valid?) In particular, you would struggle to prove that there was intention to create legal relations on their part and possibly on yours. Are you able to identify in your "back &amp; forth" a clear, unequivocal offer and acceptance? Without knowing the details of the "back &amp; forth": I was hoping that someone at $organization might be willing to write an article explaining what you do, the history of the organization and how it works appears on the face of it to be a request for a gift; not an offer to treat. Promissory Estoppel If you don't have a contract then it is possible (IMO unlikely) that they induced you by your actions to commit resources (your time in writing) in anticipation of a reward (them publishing what you wrote). To be estopped they would have to have known that you were writing the article in the expectation that it would have your organisation's name in it, that they did not intend for that to happen and that they allowed you to invest those resources notwithstanding. If you can prove all of that then you can require them to do what they promised. The big difficulty I see in this is did you tell them that a) you were writing the article, b) it would have your name in it and c) you expected it to be published in that form. Copyright If they publish the work or a derivative work without your permission you can sue for breach of copyright. As it stands, they probably have an implied licence to publish and you would need to explicitly revoke that. Options There are two reasons to go to court: Money Principle If you are going to court for money then this is at best a risky investment and at worst a gamble: balance your risk and reward carefully. If you are going to court for a principle then I simultaneously admire your principles and think you're an idiot. Make a deal Explain that the reason that you wrote the article was a) to support their fine publication and the fantastic work it does (even if you don't) and b) to garner good publicity for your organisation. You understand and admire their strong editorial stance (especially if you don't) but the article involved a considerable amount of work and could they see their way clear to give you a significant discount (~80%) on a full page ad facing the article.
It depends on where you are For example, in USA copyright exists in a literary or artistic work stored in permanent form like a book, a movie, an audio recording, a building etc. In contrast, in Australia there is no requirement for the work to be stored - that means copyright can exist in a spoken lecture. The owner of the copyright (usually, but not necessarily the creator) has the right to choose if and how their work is copied and if and how any derivative works may be made from it. For your example, the book is an original work in which copyright vests with the author(s), your notes are a derivative work in which copyright vests in you. However, you presumably did not have permission to make your derivative work so that makes it prima facie a copyright infringement. Fortunately, in the USA there exists a Fair Use defence and in Commonwealth countries the slightly less permissive Fair Dealing defence (if you are somewhere else you will need to do your own research). Search this site or read the copyright article on Wikipedia to learn about these defences. Long answer short (too late!), taking notes to aid your own study is almost certainly Fair Use/Dealing. So is sharing it with your friends. Publishing it may or may not be depending on all sorts of factors; for example, if you were to write a study guide for say a Harry Potter book for use by English literature students this is probably OK even if it is a for profit activity, because criticism is Fair Use/Dealing. Citing work is not necessary to comply with copyright law. Failing to cite may be academic misconduct but that is not a legal matter; its a matter for your academic institution.
This answer is limited to United States law. The situation in other countries is definitely different. Under United States law, the owner of a lawfully made copy of a copyrighted work has, as a right of the physical possession of that work, the right to the work's ordinary use. Licenses grant you additional rights such as the right to make derivative works, the right to make copies beyond what's needed for ordinary use, and so on. A pure license doesn't ask for anything in return, it just gives you new rights. Those rights may be conditional, but the conditions are just things you have to do to get new rights. They're not conditions imposed on any existing rights you had. A contract is an agreement between two parties. Both parties must agree to a contract for the contract to be enforceable. Contracts can take away rights you otherwise have. You don't need a license or contract to use a copyrighted work if you lawfully possess a copy of that work. Say you download a copy of a work covered by the GPL. You can refuse to accept the GPL license and you can still use that work. Why? Because no law prohibits you from doing so and there is no civil cause of action for using a lawful copy of a work under US law. But now say you want to give a copy of that work to your friend. This is illegal under US law because 17 USC 106 restrict that right to the copyright holder and there's no applicable exception since that's not part of the ordinary use. For a work covered by the GPL, the license offers to give you that right, a right you wouldn't otherwise have. It imposes conditions on you that are specifically in exchange for the grant of the new right. If you do accept the GPL, it functions as a contract. You got in exchange a right you didn't have before and if you don't comply with the GPL's terms, you don't have the copyright holder's permission to exercise those rights which is required under the law. By contrast, a click-through or EULA takes effect when you agree to it and such agreement is a condition for using the software. That's a pure contract and usually doesn't give you any rights you wouldn't have in the absence of such an agreement other than the use of the software.