This was the place where I happily showed you a website for a big company that I was contracted to write code for on behalf of another company. One company (which one, I don’t know) failed to notify me of any NDA’s or otherwise useful contract agreements that may have made light of the fact that I may not promote myself as a “provider” of the bigger of the two companies (for which I feel I did not do).

There are two things at play here:

1. Uh… yes I can. In Canada we live through intolerable copyright laws that do nothing to protect the original author or creator of creative works and instead, protect he/she who commissions that work. However, there is a nifty little piece of the copyright law that covers the moral rights to said works that, under most normal circumstances, entitles the author or creator of said work to be associated with their work if they so choose:

   from Kerr and Nadeau; Barristors and Solicitors, Patent and Trademark agents:
   
   “Moral rights are closely related to copyright, and are also protected under Canadian law. These provide the author of a work with the right to the integrity of the work, and the right, where reasonable in the circumstances, to be associated with the work as its author by name or pseudonym, as well as the right to remain anonymous. Moral rights may be waived by the author, but such waiver must be express. It is important to remember that an assignment of copyright does not, in and of itself, waive moral rights.”

2. And that brings me to my second point. Never take on work without a written contract. I took down this blog post for the good of the business relationship, but I didn’t have to. I didn’t have a contract, nor was I informed of inclusion in a contract between company A and company B, that waived any such rights so my own moral rights are still intact.

What is the lesson? Never chew gum while eating rice; it does nothing for the flavour.

Tags: app, block, canada, code, creator, rw, son, web