> If Billy didn't create the codebase, and never contributed to it, does he still have partial ownership of it? I would say so yes, but only insofar as him bei

> If Billy didn't create the codebase, and never contributed to it, does he still have partial ownership of it? I would say so yes, but only insofar as him being a part of the team. Some members of that team wrote code for that team's goals, not on their own in private hours for their own goals. Therefore the code is owned by the team which Billy is a part of. That also means that all the sales contracts Billy landed or they pitch they did, is also owned by the devs. That would indeed suggest however that Billy going off on his own creating a 50/50 with someone else, using the team's work, is like Eric Schmidt (supposing hypothetically for a moment he was a business-oriented member of the pre-Google team on day 1) taking page rank and starting a new company, i.e. total bs that wouldn't hold up in court. The whole 0.4% thing muddies the waters. It may be interpreted to say that whoever uses the produce of the team's weekend work, must give 0.4% of their venture to the rest as a reward, and having given that reward, no other remuneration is necessary to use whatever the team came up with that weekend. That makes sense in the context of a single startup arising out of this deal, or even competing ventures who both use the software and each award each member 0.4% in their respective ventures, it starts to fall apart when you look at the non-software stuff, i.e. who can appropriate the sales contracts, the logo etc which can't simply be used by two companies. It's a muddy deal that could probably go either way in the courts, which is why Billy's move is so asshole-y and why Bobby probably wanted to wipe his hands of it right away, forfeiting a 0.4% for real other reason other than wanting to disassociate and taking his $200 in the prize share he has a right to regardless. Of course, I'm not a lawyer so what makes legal sense to me is pretty meaningless :)