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If someone made a piece of software for another company but never gave away the intellectual property rights or signed anything, could they use that code in other similar software? Could they sell it?
Assume that they were not an employee of that company and that they never signed a contract of any sort with the company, but that they were paid.
For cases where this occurred within the United States, with works created on or after January 1, 1978: (the OP has since clarified that their scenario occurred elsewhere)
By default, the author (the actual creator) of a work is the owner of the copyright. However, this is not the case if the work is a "work made for hire" for an employer. In that case, the company is considered the author of the work, and owns the copyright. From US Copyright Office Circular 09:
If a work is made for hire, an employer is considered the author even if an employee actually created the work. The employer can be a firm, an organization, or an individual.
Works are considered to be made for hire in two situations, as described by that circular (emphasis added):
a) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment
or
b) a work specially ordered or commissioned...if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire.
If no written agreement was signed and no employment relationship existed, then ownership of the copyright to the software would go to the person who wrote it, and they would be able to do anything that a copyright holder could do with a work, including using it however they want or selling it.
Do note that this would only apply to software or changes made by the person in this situation. They could not, for example, sell or distribute any other piece of the software written by other people without the copyright holder's permission, even if these pieces are necessary to use the software that this person created.
(Since OP appears not to be in the US this is important)
In the US the company would retain copyright IF you were an employee or if there was a written agreement stating they own the copyright.
However in NZ if a company paid you for the work then they own the copyright.
In AU, who retains copyright depends on the medium (i.e., journalism is treated differently than software)
When the company is in one country and the author in another, it gets... complicated.
There has been some US case law, where the copyright law of the authors country takes precedence. But in that case that was a win for the US company. Don't count on that if it meant a US company loses next time. [End cynicism]
Please consider also the cost (money and time) if they sue. Even if you win it is going to be a PITA.
Also the next company you do work for is not going to be happy if they get sued (even if they win).
This could have long term damage to your reputation and perceived reliability.
There was a contract between you and the company, it just wasn’t written down. If the company sued you for copyright infringement - which the can do whether they own the copyright or not - the judge would decide based on the actual facts what kind of contract there actually was. And that would decide who is the copyright owner and what rights you and the company have.
I am inferring your level of legal experience from the way you wrote this. (which is to say, quite little). And as you say in comments, you are in Colombia.
It is a complete lose to even try, because of the hoops and hurdles in your way, many of which are dead-ends.
When an employee creates "work product" as part of their employ, that is property of the company and intellectual property rights go to the company.
You can claim that property right only if you can claim that you were not an employee at all, but some sort of creative contractor (where's your contract, contractor?), and further, that the nonexistent "contract" conferred the IP rights of your paid work to yourself and not the payer. See where that's a bit of an uphill proof?
This will play out in court, one of two ways: #1. You go to court and ask the court to rule that the intellectual property belongs to you, in advance, before you start using the IP with other companies. Or, #2, you just go ahead and use it anyway, AND the first company gets wind of this, AND the first company decides they want to sue.
In the first case, you are choosing the fight in a low-impact, low-risk way: worst case the judge says "no" and you pay the old company to license the material, or walk away and create new material.
In the second case, it's less likely to happen, but if it does happen, it is devastating. You could find yourself being attacked from both sides (because company 2 would feel this is NOT their fault and you misled them). Company 1 would sue for all company 2's profits, and both companies would agree you should pay it.
And here's how I definitively get to a "nope".
I don't know how expensive litigation is in Colombia. But I can tell you, it's a gigantic emotional energy sink also. It devastates your productivity as a creator. One person wrote amazing tech manuals (site gone), until this happened and the creative spigot just stopped. See what I mean about "distraction"?
The employer owns your work product; they do not own your mind. You can re-create the work from scratch. Turn heel and walk away from the original work and make a new and better one.
And this time, get it in writing lol....
I am probably the least knowledgeable person in this site when it comes to law, but I do write software for a living.
I believe IP laws and jurisprudence might see code in a way that is similar to other forms of IP. So I will use an example from music.
Last year a federal judge in the US ruled that Katy Perry's song Dark Horse infringed on the copyrights of rapper Flame's song Joyful noise. The songs have nearly nothing in common - the infringement was due to an eight note ostinato that wasn't even the same among the songs.
Music specialists pointed out that a myriad of other songs have the same kind of ostinato, being as similar to Joyful Nise as Dark Horse is. Most examples I could find online are in the public domain because their authors have been dead for a few centuries. A similar lawsuit made against Led Zeppelin had a more sensible outcome, which helped overturn the results of Flame vs. Perry (saving the latter some 2.8 million USD).
I found a couple videos that elaborate on this:
The bottom line is that as with all intellectual property, some parts of a work are protected, some other parts are not1. Consider that when thinking about using code that you wrote for another company. Small functions and variable declarations in code are like sequences of musical notes. What is the threshold that makes one song different from another?
Are you reusing a library that you wrote in your last job, with references to the company by name and everything? Probably a no-no.
Are you using the same algorithms and logic, wrote in a different way, decoupled from the previous company's business? Possibly in a different language, and covering more use cases? Might be worthy talking to a lawyer in person for legal advice, as this has the potential to become a new product, but might still be infringement. You might like to read about Google vs. Oracle America (I read that Google's lawyers were using the same philosophy as I'm using here, but using Harry Potter instead of Katy Perry as an example).
Are you able to solve the same problem with different algorithms? You may be a better coder now than you were before. You can probably outdo your former self and do something that is new and unique enough that you can be more at ease when it comes to copyright. Be mindful about non-competition clauses your old contract might have, though. And again, seeing a lawyer personally will save you a lot of trouble.
1 Were it not so I would be a trillionaire. I wrote int i = 0 in 1993 and now every single programmer in the world that did the same after I did would own me 25 cents for every day in their lives they have written code :D I might have to pay larger sums to the original C++ authors from the 70's though.
