In early April a landmark event in the IP sphere occurred, namely the Intellectual Property Forum. Russia and CIS Countries’. Representatives of legal consultants and businesses met there to discuss most urgent legal issues and problems. This year, Andrey Gorodissky & Partners was represented by attorney at law Jose Tobar and patent attorney Anatoly Sherstin.
During the two intensive days of the Forum, its participants discussed a great number of most burning issues relating to protection of IP rights on the Internet, development trends in IP case law, as well as strategies for protection of individual means of identification and high tech solutions.
Jose Tobar spoke at the Intellectual Property Protection in IT Sector session. His report was focused on protection by companies of their rights to software developed by them. Jose described typical mistakes software developers often make when structuring their employment relations with programmers and pointed out serious problems brought about by such mistakes. He also provided practical advice on how to properly document the employer-employee relations between developers and programmers, as well as recommendations on how employers should proceed if they doubt that their rights to already created software have duly been documented, and how developers can prove the status of a work made for hire in case a dispute over software rights cannot be avoided. Jose’s recommendations are based on AGP’s positive experience with protecting employers’ rights to work made for hire.
