Can an employee claim to own the employer's software?
An "author" of a work is the first owner of copyright.
To determine ownership, it's necessary to determine which
contributions will be considered "authorship" for the
purposes of owning copyright in software. The recent decision in
Andrews v. 1625531 Alberta Ltd. et al, 2016 FC 624 (June
3, 2016), considered this question in the context of a claim by an
ex-employee, Mr. Andrews, that he contributed to, and therefore was
a joint author of the employer's software products. The
employee went so far as to register copyright in his own name in
the Canadian Copyright Office. Since the Copyright Office
doesn't perform any "gatekeeping" functions, the
ex-employee was able to obtain a registration which purported to
relate to the employer's software products. As if this conduct
wasn't bad enough, Mr. Andrews then sued his former employer,
claiming copyright infringement, among other things.
