lZakl - 12:39 am on Mar 19, 2005 (gmt 0)

Self posted disclaimer: I am seeking the advice of others before I seek legal advice (which will be hopefully next month.) I am trying to do as much research as possible, so I may be prepared when the time comes. Your opinions and advice are gladly welcome, and just to let you know, I am in no way seeking legal council from you guys, just maybe a litle of what you know about the matter ;0)

Situation:

My wife and I have been working on a Software/Database/Tracking/system for the last 3 years. This line is for a very specific market. Now to give you an idea how specific this market is, there are 2 major companies nation-wide who have a total customer base of probable 20,000. The price of this product is extremely high, due to the fact that when sold it usually will include SQL Server licenses or Oracle licenses depending on the customers current setup. We are almost finished (within a year) and my wife's concerns are growing that her current employer (for who she developes similar databases, and maintains a large one built by one of the other two cometitors) might claim they own the rights to this new system, because without her job, she would have no knowledge of this very specific product line.

My Question:

If I learn Photoshop at my current job, and in turn sell custom graphics built on my OWN time on the side, can my employer claim rights to the images? Most likely, if I was off-the-clock and used no company resources to build these graphics, I'd say no...

My wife however holds the arguement that the fact that she has gained knowledge of a very specific field, even though we built it on our own time, built it in a different language and it has different structure than the other two companies, means nothing. Because without having hands-on on this other system, she would not have the means to create such a system. She is also worried, because current federal laws require certain aspects of the program to be set up a specified way. You cannot sell this program without first getting it certified by the gov't, so this limits how different the programs can look. The will look relatively the same on the exterior, but what makes them run will be totally different. So that is another concern, some of the forms can be construed as "having been copied". Can this have an affect legally? The front-end forms looking similar? I mean the nomencalture of specific items on these forms is a MUST. And so is the order in which they are filled... So this I am unsure of also.

Next issue: A part of her company policy defines Conflict of Interest this way: "Conflict of interest comes into effect when one's actions include the use of company resources to one's personal gain."

Now one "interpretation" of this could be:

"She used herself, her knowledge (Which is a company resource, by the way) gained by the company for personal gain."

I don't know if my concerns will make any sense to all of you out there at WW, but your input is sure appreciated :0) Thanks!

-- Zak