Your intellectual property could be unprotected, following a ruling last week in the High Court.
Employees are now free to resign and reuse code in building software solutions for competitors.
After the judgment, lawyers are warning it is no longer sufficient to rely on standard copyright protection for bespoke software applications, and users are worried about the far-reaching implications. The case concerned a team of computer programmers who left Cantor Fitzgerald International, one of the world's largest bond brokers, to work for Tradition, another broking company. There, they produced a dealing system that did much the same as a system they had built for Cantor Fitzgerald. The judge ruled against Tradition, but, on important points of law, software copyright looks more vulnerable than ever. The size of the damages has yet to be ascertained, and the victory looks a little hollow.