Hi Folks,

Probably a lot of you have come to a point where it seems you've developed a bespoke project for which you see a place in the market. For me, that's today.

I was wondering how others deal with this. Questions that arise to me first are:

• How do you agree on selling it with the client for which you've developped it
• How do you deal with IP
• What kind of ratio's are normal when selling the software, how much % for the initial client, how much % for me the developer.

It's about a Dutch client and there's a niche market for it.

Thanks, Gab

It depends what the original client payed you for: 1) service, which resulted in a piece of code. or 2) a product.

if it's 1), you've to look at the contract to see if the client owns the code. If they do, you've to negotiate with them as you don't own it and can't sell it. if it's 2) you can't sell it, as you don't own it

If YOU own the code, be also sure the original client knows this, i.e. if it's vague who owns the code and they tell you over the phone that you own it, don't accept that, always draw up a contract in that case so you own the code.

Very likely it's 1), however in many cases the sourcecode is handed over to the original client, which makes you not owning anything.

The client came to me and asked me to build a system to automate his ordering process. Now, ca. 1.5 years down the road, the project is finished and it seems we ended up with a product that could be used by others. The client does have the intention to bring it to the market with us. But we're now discussing about on which terms and conditions.

As I have never dealt with this before I was wondering what others have done in the past in such situations.

Btw: The project was informally started, it's been billed by the hour and no specs or contract have been made upfront (1.5 years ago). What does this mean for the intellectual property/copyright/ownership of the code? And our libraries which were already existing, but have been developed further also during this project (and others during the same time span).

gabrielk wrote:

The client came to me and asked me to build a system to automate his ordering process. Now, ca. 1.5 years down the road, the project is finished and it seems we ended up with a product that could be used by others. The client does have the intention to bring it to the market with us. But we're now discussing about on which terms and conditions.

As I have never dealt with this before I was wondering what others have done in the past in such situations.

Btw: The project was informally started, it's been billed by the hour and no specs or contract have been made upfront (1.5 years ago). What does this mean for the intellectual property/copyright/ownership of the code? And our libraries which we already existing, but have been developed further also during this project (and others during the same time span).

If you dont explicitly transfer the ownership of the work, then you automatically own it when you create it. (so you don't have to do anything to get ownership of your work). Transfer of ownership always has to be done through a formal agreement.