jake has sparked a discus
sion about confidentiality and intellectual property in the it industry. my
own feeling is that any code written on the clients time is their property but
it is impossible to police the thoughts and activity of the developer in their
own time so people just have to be grown up about things. realistically, we are
hired because of our prior experience with a technology which will inevitably
include a library of code samples and hacks built up over the years. although
not explicitly stated i think most clients would be surprised if an experienced
developer didn’t bring these with them so they must also be quite aware that we
keep track of the cool little bits of code that we write.
no doubt my
brother will have a somewhat more structured and legally thought out point
of view!
Matt White 
In general, the key form of intellectual property right which you will own in relation to code made by you will be copyright. This arises automatically provided that your work is original. Copyright will vest in the author and, unless specifically assigned to the company you are contracting for, will remain vested in you. If you apply this to the code you bring with you which you have written (and you have not signed up to a nasty ‘assignment of furure copyright’ clause!), then you can use it on other jobs. However, if there is no formal assignment document relating to your code, the law will probably imply an irrocable, perpetual, world wide licence to the company you are contracting for to use that code. In general, it is not possible under English law to obtain a patent (ownership of an invention) for software, whereas you are able to do so in the US.
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