Protecting my code

zig

Hi all, not sure if this moreso belongs in the legal forums or not. But I think this is a good place to start.

Does anyone have any insight into copyright and licensing etc with regard to protecting my web application code/Intellectual Property?.

Its a monster size of a Angular/PHP project and takes long enough for our own devs to get up to speed and that is WITH docs and support. While I genuinely dont believe personally something dodgy will ever happen, I equally dont want to be the naive guy who didnt bother at least putting in some protections. I guess in theory what could happen is something like having a long running client who has time to learn it etc (altough even then you'd nearly be better off writing your own)

Its just there are now more and more situations popping up where its looking like we may have to opt to host it either on premise, or on a VM that the client may have access to. I am wondering has anyone experience with dealing with this?

I am not too keen on the code obfuscation idea, mainly because its a bit of an unknown for me and I cant help think it will introduce other problems like bugs etc. Is some sort of copyright agreement enough?

Jim2007

I'm not sure exactly what is more important to you physical protection of the code or legal protection as you mention both.

• JavaScript and PHP are scripts so where ever you deploy your site will have to include the code either on your own servers or a third party.
• There is little or not intellectual property in the development of your site so very little chance of legal protection
• The content of your site - articles, art work etc, assuming it is original is of course covered by copyright

The majority of software is developed using common languages, algorithms and techniques so there is not much there to protect in the first place. That is why there are so few legal actions on it and you can't copyright an idea.

zig

I would say legal protection is more important.

Dont get me wrong, its a web application which a developer could rebuild (with enough time). Its not that I am doing any genius algorithms in the back end that someone else could not figure how to themselves.

However, what Im wondering (based on your answer) can I copyright the code? Do I even need to do anything?

To give an analogy, if i wrote a book, none of the words are original or even possibly sentences. And someone writing a book that is similar but written in their own original way would not be a copyright breach, however someone literally taking my entire book and selling it as their own (or even just downloading it illegally and reading it) would be a breach of copyright.

I guess I am asking does the same apply to code? and if it doesnt by default, can I copyright it via legal means (even just a copyright agreement of sorts).

Lets say someone uses the application without having the code, yes with a huge amount of time they could rebuild, but lets say they are very experienced and do have access to the code. They could theoretically rebuild extremely quickly and sell or even just it as their own. Its the latter I am trying to protect.

i.e, if it came to it and I could prove they literally used my code , could I sue etc

zig

I think I might have my answer: https://devhaus.ie/guides/intellectual-property-rights-who-owns-the-software.

The way I see it is:

1. They either fully steal it to save themselves time and money, that way they are clearly breaking the law
2. They change it enough to make it "their own": such a big job you may as well write it yourself
3. They just write again themselves

Looks like its pretty safe!

Jim2007

Unless you have come up with some very unusual and unique code there is not nothing to copyright.

The proof is in the eating.... you don't see cases going to court nor large sums of money being paid over for breaches, for the very simple reason that there is almost nothing to copyright in the first place.

If you hire me to write software for you and I agree to hand over the copyright in it to you, it all looks great and the lawyer gets their cut. The problem is that since I used all the usual stuff to write it, I have no copyright in it to start with, so how can I pass it on to you? Likewise, if someone else uses the same stuff to develop a similar application how can you demonstrate that it was yours and you had some copyright in it?

Of course you can sue someone who uses your software without authorisation, but whether you can defend it in court and show a financial loss as a consequence is the big issue. And I would not want to bet on you being successful.

Since you are talking about a website, I'd suggest you concentrate on make it as unique as possible in terms of content, graphics etc. Use unique graphics, images and content that stuff is easy to go after someone if the breach it and usually a solicitor's letter will be enough to bring it to a halt.

But from a practical point of view I would not place any reliance in being able to prevent someone from using your code. Furthermore, such arguments could go on for ages before they'd even get to a decision point and by then probably the value would already be gone as tech changes quickly.

In the past, I have had to clients come back to me on this and my answer was always the same, fine, off you go, come back to me when you have figured out which part of the code I had copyright in in the first place. I never heard from either of them after that.

Talisman

@zig Do you know exactly what it is that you're trying to protect?

It might be worth offering the client a license that leaves them free to make changes to the code with an obligation to feed such changes back into the original source tree. Of course you don't have to accept the changes but they might be useful if the changes prove to be of benefit to other clients. You could also charge them per developer seat for the privilege because going this route will require some hand holding inevitably.

Eva2198

It might be worth offering the client a license that leaves them free to make changes to the code with an obligation to feed such changes back into the original source tree.