martingale - 6:16 pm on Mar 21, 2005 (gmt 0)

What she signed is critical. A lot of places have legalese in the employment contract that specifies exactly when software is owned by the company, etc.

As for "she learned it there" that in and of itself won't matter. Your wife has a right to work, and to use her skills and abilities that she has learned in her career to get work. Courts take a very dim view of contracts that purport to limit someone's ability to earn a living, even were there a "non compete" clause in her employment contract, or some such, a court would likely throw it out on the grounds that it limited her right to work. Talk to a lawyer, but I would not think this will be your problem.

The big worry here is whether her employment contract assigns copyright to her employer, and under what conditions it would do so. You need copies of her employment contract, and her company's HR manual, etc., and you need to take those to an IP lawyer and see whether the company can claim that she has produced is a "work for hire" that they own on the basis of intellectual property agreements between them and your wife.