Copyright: Idea vs Execution? I have been helping a nonprofit by developing a piece of software that they needed. The software is more-or-less built to their specs in a &quot;functional&quot; way, but I wrote 100% of the code: they are not programmers. Anyhow, we didn't make any kind of contract at the beginning verbally or otherwise. Who owns the copyright to all of this? Do they have any rights to it at all for providing &quot;ideas&quot;?
The Organization Does Not Own the Copyright As you were clearly not an employee of the organization, and did not have a specific contract with them, this was not a &quot;work-made-for-hire&quot; (WFH). Therefore, the copyright initially belonged to the author, in this case the programmer, that is you. That being so, it would require a written document to transfer the copyright to another during your lifetime. In future there should be a written agreement in such a case, spelling out just what rights are to be retained by whom. It can save lots of trouble. The organization would have an implied license to use the software. The terms of this would be defined by the conduct of the parties, and might be a matter of dispute. Probably there would be a non-exclusive license without any fee or ending date. Probably there would be no license to distribute to others unless you explicitly grant one. Specific US Laws 17 USC 101 defines a WFH: A “work made for hire” is— (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. For the purpose of the foregoing sentence, a “supplementary work” is a work prepared for publication as a secondary adjunct to a work by another author for the purpose of introducing, concluding, illustrating, explaining, revising, commenting upon, or assisting in the use of the other work, such as forewords, afterwords, pictorial illustrations, maps, charts, tables, editorial notes, musical arrangements, answer material for tests, bibliographies, appendixes, and indexes, and an “instructional text” is a literary, pictorial, or graphic work prepared for publication and with the purpose of use in systematic instructional activities. (emphasis added) 17 USC 201 provides that: (a) Initial Ownership. — Copyright in a work protected under this title vests initially in the author or authors of the work. The authors of a joint work are coowners of copyright in the work. (b) Works Made for Hire. — In the case of a work made for hire, the employer or other person for whom the work was prepared is considered the author for purposes of this title, and, unless the parties have expressly agreed otherwise in a written instrument signed by them, owns all of the rights comprised in the copyright. ... (d) Transfer of Ownership.— (d) (1) The ownership of a copyright may be transferred in whole or in part by any means of conveyance or by operation of law, and may be bequeathed by will or pass as personal property by the applicable laws of intestate succession. (d) (2) Any of the exclusive rights comprised in a copyright, including any subdivision of any of the rights specified by section 106, may be transferred as provided by clause (1) and owned separately. The owner of any particular exclusive right is entitled, to the extent of that right, to all of the protection and remedies accorded to the copyright owner by this title. 17 USC 204 provides that: (a) A transfer of copyright ownership, other than by operation of law, is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such owner’s duly authorized agent.
It seems that you don’t understand what parody is. If you do understand, please explain how it’s even possible to parody computer code. What you can do with “open source” code depends on the licence the copyright holder(s) release it under. For some very permissive licences you can do what you suggest, for most, you can’t.
Yes, you can fork it - but you can’t use it GitHub explain what’s a public deposit with no licence means here. If you find software that doesn’t have a license, that generally means you have no permission from the creators of the software to use, modify, or share the software. Although a code host such as GitHub may allow you to view and fork the code, this does not imply that you are permitted to use, modify, or share the software for any purpose. Your options: Ask the maintainers nicely to add a license. Unless the software includes strong indications to the contrary, lack of a license is probably an oversight. If the software is hosted on a site like GitHub, open an issue requesting a license and include a link to this site. If you’re bold and it’s fairly obvious what license is most appropriate, open a pull request to add a license – see “suggest this license” in the sidebar of the page for each license on this site (e.g., MIT). Don’t use the software. Find or create an alternative that is under an open source license. Negotiate a private license. Bring your lawyer.
By &quot;unlicensed&quot; you mean that it doesn't state a license for use (MIT, GPL, etc.)? Those licenses are just a codified bundle of terms of use that cover many many edge cases. You have in place a much simpler agreement that covers the primary situation: you using/modifying the code for your own use. It's just like borrowing a car. You will ask a friend &quot;hey, could I borrow your car for a bit?&quot; &quot;sure!&quot;. You know there's a possibility that you'll get in an accident or something weird will happen, but you think the chances of that are minimal and you would be able to work it out. If you ask a car rental company, they'll give you a full contract covering every situation that may happen. Similarly, a large company would be hesitant to borrow a car for corporate use without a legal framework surrounding it. So you will likely be in the clear if you are just using it for a small project with minimal legal/financial implications. If you plan on turning your project into a multi-billion dollar empire, you should revisit your agreement.
There is no IP in ideas! There is copyright in writing it down - they can't use your exact words without permission. However, sending it to them in the form of a suggestion would give them a pretty much unassailable argument that you have given them an implicit licence. You can patent an invention (not an idea), claim IP in a trade mark (also, not an idea), register a design (again, not an idea) and hold copyright in an artistic work (once more, not an idea). They are required to keep confidences but offering them a suggestion probably doesn't count as supplying confidential information. I can see no risk in acting on customer suggestions. Hence, the idea to raise prices can be acted on or not at the discretion of the company.
is contract text itself subject to copyright? What are my options? It largely depends on the originality of your contract. C &amp; J Management Corp. v. Anderson, 707 F.Supp.2d 858, 862 (2009) points to multiple references against preclusion of "a copyrightable interest in a contract". But you would need to prove that your competitor copied "original elements" of your contract including "a minimum degree of creativity and originality required to support a valid copyright". See Donald v. Uarco Business Forms, 478 F.2d 764, 766 (1973). Your post provides no information that would help identifying or ruling out this issue in your matter. Without realizing, you might have paid dearly for boilerplate language that your lawyer copied from somewhere else. Indeed, there is so much regurgitation and copy/pasting in the legal "profession" (judges included, as is notorious in judicial opinions they release and in the similarities --verbatim-- among the procedure law of many, many U.S. jurisdictions). That regurgitation is not bad in and of itself, though, since what matters is the expeditious administration of justice and the protection of your rights, rather than obtaining creative expressions authored by some lawyer. You might end up wasting valuable energy and money if you went after the competitor for something like this without first assessing the extent of originality in your contract. Focus instead on the much more detrimental fact that your competitor "plays dirty in general".
No Let’s assume the most generous interpretation: you came up with a fully fleshed-out idea for a television show - name, characters, plot, scene-setting - the lot. You told this idea over the phone to someone else who made this show incorporating every single part of your idea. Here’s the rub: nobody owns ideas. Unless you had them sign a non-disclosure agreement before you told them (which you didn’t), they are free to use your ideas however they like.
You don't need the copyright. You need a license that allows you to use the artwork. If there was no agreement in writing or verbally about a payment, then she owns the copyright on all the artwork she created, and you have no license. Publishing your app without copyright or license would be legally very dangerous; it would actually be copyright infringement. You have no right to demand the copyright or a license. You can persuade the designer, usually by paying money, or by paying some percentage of the income from the app, to give you the copyright or a license to use the graphics. And you definitely want things in writing. How to get a license? You find the person, send her a letter asking for a license, which would be for example a letter saying "I hereby grant s1ddok the non-exclusive right to include the artwork listed below, to which I hold the copyright, in the applications XXX and YYY, and to sell copies of those applications including the artwork, in exchange for a payment of $ZZZ" or something similar. She may do this if offered an appropriate amount money, or a percentage of the sales or profits, or some amount per application downloaded. A copyright transfer is a bit more complicated (especially if she is abroad) and will also cost you more, because copyright transfer means she loses the right to her own works.