I would suggest reading about "Work for Hire" it's a legal term. I'm not a lawyer, so don't take what I'm about to say as legal advice, just my personal experi

I would suggest reading about "Work for Hire" it's a legal term. I'm not a lawyer, so don't take what I'm about to say as legal advice, just my personal experience. In my understanding, in general, if you are paid to do it and there is no explicit contract that says the employer owns your work, then you own the work. However, you must look at your contract with your employer. I am guessing you signed something saying the University owns what you do while you work there, most do. Universities are smart like that. It may be a sticky issue to say who wrote what and when, so probably best to avoid using your own code at work if you want to retain ownership of it. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22work+for+hire%22 http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22work+for+hire%22 If I were in your situation, I'd take the opportunity to solve the problem in /another/ way, one that may be better. Worst case scenario, your brain gets bigger and you can still do things the way you were doing them before you wrote the new way for the university.