The client needed legal advice on determining and establishing the authorship of computer programs and parts thereof, as well as determining the risks of not transferring the copyright on proprietary works to the company.
An additional feature of the project was the fact that one of the founders of the company acted as both director and developer (programmer). He created the main code of the computer program without forming formal service tasks. Accordingly, we were requested to identify the subject to whom the developed code belonged.
In the process of consulting, we determined:
- objects of intellectual property rights in respect of which no rights were transferred to the company;
- the main risks associated with the failure to formalize the employment relationship with the director-programmer, who simultaneously participated in the development of the program while performing management functions;
- the strategy of recognizing the code created by the director without an employment contract as an employee's work.
Additionally, we analyzed the director's potential liability for infringement of intellectual property rights and statutory obligations, and based on the analysis we formed a strategy for optimal registration of intellectual property rights for computer programs. As part of the project, our team also developed agreements for the alienation (transfer) of rights to parts of the program and license agreements that defined the further terms of use of the computer program.
