Re: Can my company take my time without compensation?

On Dec 20, 9:56 pm, Mike Collins
<sendyourspamtothem...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<SNIP>

I work as a hardware support computer engineer.  My company does not
expect any software capability of me.
The range of machines that I look after generate a log that is mostly
raw, hexadecimal data that has to be laboriously decoded using
reference material.  The program I wrote has the reference material
built into it and decodes the log and presents a highly readable and
infomative output file.  It also does statistical analysis on the log,
and various data collections.

<SNIP>

About this "reference material" that you built into your code. Is it
in public domain, or is it proprietary information? IANAL, but it
seems to me that you can't reasonably be asserting ownership of the
code, when at the heart of it lies the company's reference material.
For the lawyers hereabouts, are there any legal implications of
including the company's reference material in the product?

Would a modular, general purpose log analyser with hooks to external
resources (such as the company's hex data lookup table) be a way round
any such issue? I ask now out of academic interest rather than making
it as a suggestion.

btw if a comparison helps, my work is network consultancy/
architecture, but in the past, I have written large amounts of code to
make it easier for the hands-on guys to manage the network. Much of
that has been in my own time, where I have identified a need for
specific information to be available. I have never been paid for any
of it, nor do I expect to be. I would not, however, expect to be
forbidden from performing a similar task for a subsequent employer, or
even as a favour to a mate working in the same field, although I
probably would not copy code verbatim. I would, however, use the same
algorithms and coding style.

Cheers
Steve
.

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