Not fully answering your question, but:

1. What were the contract terms when the developer was being engaged?
2. When the developer was working, was he/she stationed in the client's premises, using the client's infrastructure?

Finally, I think that developer is not very wise, scripts can always be thrown away or replaced, but the data is where the money is at. Unless there was very complex business rules done in the scripts, but even then, its always a matter of time to recreate them.

We really should have a credibility reference Bureau for IT professionals

On Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 7:40 PM, Collins Areba via skunkworks <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:
Dear skunks / ettes / lings,

Can one lay a claim on a database structure? Does this constitute of intellectual property? 

Scenario: 
Developer X is handing over a project he did for Client Y. Developer refused to give up the scripts, saying all coding is their intellectual property. So All we got was the database dump. 

I have used some scripts , reverse engineered the process and introduced some simple CRUD files and can now "administer" the content. Developer X is not bitching, that we used their database structure. 
Im miffed. Is this even possible? how then would I have gotten the data? Does it change the intellectual property "ginene" if I change the names of the tables? 

~ #shocked  

--
Regards,

Collins Areba,
P.O Box 44441, 00100
Nairobi, Kenya.
Tel: +254 707 750 788 / 720 516 758
Twitter: @arebacollins.
Skype: arebacollins

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