Legal Question in Business Law in California
Hello
My business contracted with a software engineer to build us a virtual office so our employees/customers can coordinate online. After the code was customized to our company's needs we informed the enginner we would like to hire an employee full time to manage it. He told us we are required to work with him or by the license to the "api code" from him. He claims he owns the code, and the work he did was just customizing it for our company.
My question is, if we already paid him for the work, are we really at his mercy for him to set any price he wants for the code? He could charge us millions of dollars.
2 Answers from Attorneys
There is no way to answer your question without seeing the contract and license terms to which you agreed.
My office has experience with software licensing and development. The first order of business would be to review the contract that you entered into. That will likely provide answers to your questions. If not, we would analyze the situation further after discussing some factual questions with you. Unless you agreed otherwise, it seems very unlikely that you could be held at ransom for the code. Even if you agreed to work exclusively with the programmer regarding this code, he cannot charge "millions" if it isn't worth millions. I think that a short visit with an attorney would help create a much clearer picture of your present predicament and a reasonable path to resolution.
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