> If the company owns That is entirely a matter of initiation. If the work initiates from the employer there is no question the work is owned by the employer.

> If the company owns That is entirely a matter of initiation. If the work initiates from the employer there is no question the work is owned by the employer. Less clear, but still very clear, is if the work occurs on employer time and/or equipment. If the work initiates from your personal mind far separated from employer guidance then its a personal project. Yes, I am aware of some Mattel doll lawsuit where a guy created action figures on his own time outside of work and the toy making employer assumed ownership of that personal project. This is an extreme edge case though, because the employer had to prove the personal project was work residual from employment work and had to go to court and sue their employee. The motivation there is that the employer liked the employee's idea enough to want the freedom to pursue that idea as a future business interest. This never happens in software unless an employee builds something to compete with the business interests of the employer. That is far easier to prove, malicious intent, and not the same thing. The reason this never happens in software is that it radically opens a liability window that did not exist before. For example, consider Facebook. Facebook is not a software company, which is a company that sells software. Facebook is a media company that provides advertising and happens to write software for internal use. If Facebook were to sue their own employee to gain a new unrelated software product line then they become a software company and then become open to lawsuits, competition, and trust concerns they didn't have to concern themselves with before. If Facebook did want to assume ownership of an employee's pet project it would be far cheaper to just buy it from the employee or pay the employee to work on that idea as a job function. If the employee did not want to give their personal project to Facebook then Facebook could always fire the employee and start the idea from scratch under Facebook branding, which is also cheaper than suing their employee.