On 12 Feb 2015, at 3:12, Skeeve Stevens wrote:
Hi all,
I have two perspectives I am trying to address with regard to network
design and intellectual property.
1) The business who does the design - what are their rights?
2) The customer who asked for the rights from a consultant
My personal thoughts are conflicting:
- You create networks with standard protocols, configurations, etc...
so it
shouldn't be IP
- But you can design things in interesting ways, with experience,
skill,
creativity.. maybe that should be IP?
- But artwork are created with colors, paintbrushes, canvas... but the
result is IP
- A photographer takes a photo - it is IP
- But how are 'how you do your Cisco/Juniper configs' possibly IP?
- If I design a network one way for a customer and they want 'IP',
does
that mean I can't ever design a network like that again? What?
I've seen a few telcos say that they own the IP related to the network
design of their customers they deploy... which based on the above...
feels
uncomfortable...
I'm really conflicted on this and wondering if anyone else has come
across
this situation. Perhaps any legal cases/precedent (note, I am not
looking
for legal advice :)
If this email isn't appropriate for the list... sorry, and please feel
free
to respond off-line.
...Skeeve
You really need to get real legal advice. There are a fair number of
deep
legal issues here, as best I can tell (and I'm not a lawyer); there may
not
be anything that's actually legally protectable. Of course, the other
party
may have a lawyer who thinks the opposite, and there may or may not be
enough
case law to come to a reasonably probable common answer.
So--decide what your preference is (I tend to agree with Randy, but
that's me),
and learn what your lawyer thinks of the general question. Then ask the
lawyer
what to do if there are conflicting opinions on whether or not it can be
protected, and to draft language consistent with your preference and
that
belief for the contract.
--Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb