Over the last few months, I’ve spent a fair amount of time building a tool that I’m reasonably certain I can sell (nothing novel, don’t get too excited) and I would really like to try. I know there is a customer base and I know it’s useful… because I built it to use myself. But I also plan to use it at work, that’s half the reason I built it. In fact, most of the company templates are just mine that I brought with me when I was hired.

While 90% of the time I spent building it was in the evenings, on my ‘own’ time… perhaps 10% of it was ‘company’ time where I had free time and spent it building this tool.

I’m 90% certain that my employee contract states any ‘inventions’ created are owned by the company, which is pretty standard in my industry. So I have a few questions:

  • Does my employer own this tool? (I know you aren’t lawyers, but maybe someone has insight?)
  • What is the risk of selling it anyway? What happens if I sell it and use it at work?
  • How do I find a clear path forward (without hiring a lawyer. This is practically hobby-tier, I don’t want to take it that far)

Posting from alt account because I’m paranoid and want to retain anonymity JIC

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  • juggerjaxen@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Does your employer even know you built that tool? I mean, you did it in 10% of your company time, but did you show him anything? Is your employer big? Is this software going to be so big that the sale is noteworthy? I mean, if we are talking about a sale of 5k, nobody’s going to care. If you’re going to sell this thing for a million, of course they’re going to care, unless your company is so huge that they actually don’t care. But then, how would they find out? Why would they care? Are they even interested in the software? Could you give me some more details?