Non contracted intelectual property.

This is purely for my curiosity's sake as the situation has already been settled but I was curious if anyone could give me some information or maybe a case law or two to back me up. I was working for a restaurant in my area as their kitchen manager. They were completely lacking in any sort of inventory management when I started there. I decided on my own accord to write a little program in sql using Access (on my personal computer using my copy of access) in order to keep track of their inventory. I was never commissioned to write this program. I wrote a minimum of 75% of the program on my own time. A maximum of 25% however was completed on work time when I had some downtime and nothing else to do. When I quit my job, the owner and GM "claimed" they had talked to their lawyer and owned the rights to this program. I denied them and they "decided not to pursue it". Did they have any legal right to my software?

 Brian Received on Tue Jan 09 2007 - 01:00:15 GMT