Ownership of the code I've written — General Questions

[to_the_sun]

I have some very general questions about intellectual property rights. I "own" any code i write, do I not? How is that ownership defined? If some one comes along with a program that is exactly like mine and tries to sell it, or claim it as their own, have they violated my rights? Do I have to prove that I came up with the program first (is it simply a matter of having written it first)? What if their program is slightly different, but obviously inspired by mine, or uses some elements that are exactly the same, but adds others? What is the purpose of a patent? Is it simply a good way to prove you came up with something first, just something that would hold up well in court? Or does a patent define the moment when my ownership begins?

Thanks in advance for any info!

[Ciberithm]

Software can be copyrighted, meaning no one can copy your code (legally anyway). If you are concerned about your intellectual property, then you should not publish your code anyway, but copyrights are a good idea if your code is script, not binary. Patents are ot issued on source code, or even algorithms. Patents protect your process, implemented by your algorithms and code. Keep in mind that software patents are difficult and expensive to enforce. Protect your released software with an end user license agreement that prohibits uses you do not want, I.e. copying, reverse engineering, etc.

[SoundGoddess]

I have some very general questions about intellectual property rights. I "own" any code i write, do I not? How is that ownership defined? If some one comes along with a program that is exactly like mine and tries to sell it, or claim it as their own, have they violated my rights? Do I have to prove that I came up with the program first (is it simply a matter of having written it first)? What if their program is slightly different, but obviously inspired by mine, or uses some elements that are exactly the same, but adds others? What is the purpose of a patent? Is it simply a good way to prove you came up with something first, just something that would hold up well in court? Or does a patent define the moment when my ownership begins?

Thanks in advance for any info!

Your code is protected automatically by copyright law.

Your rights under copyright depend on a lot of factors. I would say the primary one being, does the person copying you have access to your source code? Are they reverse-engineering or copying the actual logic of what you're doing, as in using the same exact algorithms? Or are they just using your app as inspiration and writing their own from scratch?

I personally find software patents to be kind of ridiculous, like when Amazon goes around patenting ubiquitous ecommerce shopping cart functionality.

However, you can patent certain things; the main issue with patents being that you have to be willing to sue people to enforce them...it's not just enough to get the patent, but if you have it and someone else cashes in on what you're doing then you have some grounds to collect royalties from it.

Pretty much your rights are only violated if you have an agreement with the other party and they breached contract in some way, or you can prove to a court that someone is leveraging your image to cause confusion in the marketplace.

Otherwise if they just designed something similar, it's really pretty hard for you to do much about it.

Think of it this way...if you go snap photos at a public landmark, and that inspires someone else to go to the same landmark and take similar photos, you can't do anything about it. However if they downloaded copies of your photos and just did a couple manipulations in photoshop to pass it off as their own you'd have rights to make claims against them.

[dmbaer]

I "own" any code i write, do I not? How is that ownership defined?

First of all, who was paying you to write the code? If it was nobody and you were doing it in your own time, then clearly you own it. If you were employed, then chances are your employer owns the code.

Regarding theft ... well good luck with that. Irrespective of the law (in whatever country you reside), it's damned hard to prove and harder still to get compensated for your loss. If you have the resources of a large company with significant legal resources, you've got a shot. Otherwise, you're roadkill. Sorry to be so negative, but I've experienced this first hand. It's all to easy for the bad guys to win.