my employer brought up the book Tom had written and said technically it belonged to him I'm assuming this was stored on a company-provided computer? IANAL but

my employer brought up the book Tom had written and said technically it belonged to him I'm assuming this was stored on a company-provided computer? IANAL but to be clean you should impose a firewall between employer-provided equipment and your project. Do your coding or book writing on your own computer. Legal issues aside, it makes it harder for them to get their paws on it. And if you're fired you've still got access to it.