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I understand that software written during a employment/contract with a Company belongs to said Company (e.g. they hold the copyright to software source code and other IP produced during the course of the employment/contract).

The question is: how about moral rights to said source code/IP, specifically the right to attribution? More specifically:

  1. Is developer allowed to attribute himself to certain projects he worked on during the employment/contract?
  2. Can company prevent him the attribution, e.g. listing of the projects (project name, duration, level of contribution) on his profile/CV?
  3. Are moral/attribution rights granted by law and can they be waived by a contract?
  4. Can company use any other means (e.g. the NDA) to prevent attribution?

Thank you for your help.

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  • While copyright is generally similar between jurisdictions, moral rights are treated quite differently in Canada, US, Europe... Where are you? – user3851 Mar 8 '16 at 16:04
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    In EU, working for an US company (remote work) – Peter Knego Mar 8 '16 at 16:05
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    The EU is not a country - each member has different copyright laws – Dale M♦ Mar 8 '16 at 19:20
  • Im based in Slovenia, working remotely as a contractor for US based company. The applicable law in the contract is US/California. – Peter Knego Mar 9 '16 at 9:37
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As an example, in Germany the author always has the right to state that he or she is the author. Nobody else has that right. The right cannot be sold or transferred in any way. So yes, if you wrote it, even if you were paid to write it, even if you signed a contract that the company will have the copyright, and even if you signed a contract that the company will have the right to claim to be the author, you and only you will have the right to claim authorship. In Germany. Other countries may have different laws; on the other side, anyone other than you would be lying if they claimed they wrote the work.

On the other hand, if for example in the USA the existence of the work is a trade secret, and you are under NDA, it would be quite likely that telling about the existence of the work would be illegal, and claiming that you are the author without telling about the existence of the work is difficult. There will always be conflicting rights.

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  • I honestly don't get how this answers the specific questions outlined by the OP. – Zizouz212 Mar 10 '16 at 0:17
  • I'm sorry that you don't get it. – gnasher729 Aug 24 '16 at 7:53

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