hedgehoglab

In a recent conversation at a stand-up scrum at the lab, the issue of Intellectual Property was brought up.

Intellectual Property or IP, for those who don’t know, is one of those words used by companies that never actually produce anything original but claim domain over everything. Even Wikipedia cannot agree on what it exactly stands for (the article on IP is in dispute). In one of my recent interviews, I (possibly controversially) used the phrase “Vaporware is not Intellectual Property.”

This raised an interesting debate internally about the issue,”At what stage in the production of a software system does it actually become your IP?” I am sure this is a highly debatable issue and I know everyone of us had different ideas of what actually constitutes IP.

One thing we were all in agreement though was that Vaporware or software that is nothing more than an idea, or concept (talked about around a drink at a pub) and a few powerpoint slides is not IP. Please! I have heard too many stories from friends who dreamed about building Facebook in 1995! Tough! You did not and Mark Zuckerberg now has enough money to buy a few houses.

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