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
Why are you asking Reddit if you aren’t sure about the terms of your employment? Read your company’s employee handbook. If it doesn’t discuss this, ask your legal / compliance team for the rules around it. You’re going to spend a boat load in legal fees talking to a lawyer if you can’t be bothered to familiarize yourself with your company’s policies.
Starting off with a lawyer like a bunch of people are suggesting is just going to set you up to rack up legal fees and it’ll ensure that your company won’t trust you. Management and legal teams do not like surprises. Discuss this openly with your company’s legal / compliance team, and then hire a lawyer if you need it.
You’re going to run into two possible issues:
Like you mentioned, anything built on company time may be property of the company you work for.
Even if it’s not, and you get the go ahead, you need to know if you are required to self report any outside business doings. If you plan on selling the tool, you’ll need to be a small business / sole proprietor. This could need to be reported and approved before doing anything. If this isn’t approved, issue 1 is a moot point.
I’m an engineering manager in a highly regulated space. We need to check legal boxes for this type of stuff. That’s it. I fully support my reports if this comes up. But my responsibility is to the company first. If the software is not specific to the line of business we are in, isn’t an integral component to classified IP, it wouldn’t compete with us in any way, and you could sell it while not impacting your ability to work during your scheduled hours, you’re good to go.
Best of luck.