Can Employer Usurp Copyright On GPL-derived Work?

An anonymous reader writes: I am a recent graduate, and I've been working on my own on a project that uses GPL-licensed libraries. Later a university department hired me to develop this project into a solution that they needed, on a part-time basis. The project's size increased over time and soliciting help from the open source community seemed like the natural way to go, however when I suggested this, my boss was not interested, and it was made clear to me that the department's position was that copyright of the whole thing belonged to them. Indeed by default work created for an employer belongs to the employer, so I may have found myself in the same trap as described in this story: "http://developers.slashdot.org/story/02/03/21/0139244/Beware-Employment-Contracts". Even though I want to release my code to the public I don't know whether I have the legal right to do so, and many people are likely in the same position, working for a university without realizing that their work may not belong to them.

I am wondering whether there is room for hope, since
(1) I started the project on my own, and since no written or verbal agreement was ever made to transfer copyright over to my employer I question whether they can claim that they now own the extended version of the project.
(2) The whole project relies on GPL libraries, since from the start I intended to release it under GPL, and without those libraries it would be useless. Can they still claim copyright and prevent me from publishing the source code even though it is derived from GPL software?

You are wrong.

[Lord Bitman]

The work you did on your own is yours, and you choose to release it under GPL. any extended version (the work you did for them) is theirs, and they only need to license it under GPL if they distribute it externally. The GPL (just like copyright in general) only effects distribution, not creation. (You can re-make Iron Man 2 in your basement, and nobody can stop you until you've shown intent to show the end result to anyone other than those involved in production)

Nothing of yours has been taken from you. They are not withholding anything they shouldn't. This basically amounts to you whining because you thought you got to keep something that somebody else paid you to make for them.

time to step up and deal

[GMGruman]

If you entered into an employment contract or even a freelance contract, chances are that it is "work for hire," meaning the copyrights rest with the employer not you. Surely you signed a written employment agreement or a written contract that spells this out. If you did not, state law will determine the presumption. However, the fact that you used GPL code intending to release it to the community but then were told by your employer that it doesn't do open source, since it wants to own the software, you sho

Copyright is not GPL

[barzam]

GPL=! copyright. That's the first thing to understand. Copyright gives you a number of rights, such as the right to distibute the work as you see fit. By licensing the work with the GPL you don't lose the copyright (in the sense of droit moral at least) only some of the rights associated with copyright ("the four freedoms" etc). Bottom line: if the libraries are published under the LGPL you can use them in a derived work without publishing it under the LGPL, if they are licensed under the GPL you must lic

GPL != LGPL

[WindShadow]

It's likely that the libraries are under the LGPL, and therefore source code linked to them is not necessarily GPL. There is a lot of information on the FSF site and other places, but I suspect that the program is not covered, although any modified source versions of the libraries would be required to be available if the executable is released. The laws on this are complex.