That's an interesting thought - does the copyright assignment happen before or after the license assignment? Let's say my contract says "employee agrees to tra

That's an interesting thought - does the copyright assignment happen before or after the license assignment? Let's say my contract says "employee agrees to transfer copyright to all work". Does that happen immediately the moment the work comes into existence? If yes - you can't actually license it how you want, since you're never the copyright owner of the work. What if I just don't assign the copyright? It is clear breach of contract, but at least for some amount of time, the company isn't the copyright owner, so you CAN assign a license. Can the court grant a retrospective copyright ownership, so that the original license is null? What if it was GPL3 and you gave the code to someone else, who made their own modifications and started distributing their version? If they're making money from it, could they sue the original company for loss of profit in the event that the court decrees that they don't actually have a license following the resolution of the lawsuit between the company and employee?