An engineer resigns from a consulting firm and joins a competitor, retaining a personal copy of a pump-selection spreadsheet that the engineer wrote while employed at the former firm, using the firm's test data and firm work hours. Under the NCEES Model Rules of Professional Conduct, use of that spreadsheet on the new employer's projects is:
- (A)Not permitted without the former firm's consent
- (B)Permitted, the engineer being the author of the file
- (C)Permitted if the former firm is credited in the deliverable
- (D)Permitted once any noncompete period has expired
Show worked solution
Answer: (A)
The spreadsheet belongs to the former firm, and having written it gives the engineer no right to carry it to a competitor.
Ownership of designs, data, and tools created within the scope of employment rests with the employer, so authorship by itself confers no right to carry the product to a competitor.
Attribution and the expiry of a noncompete answer different obligations, since credit is not a license to copy and a noncompete restrains employment rather than the use of proprietary material, which stays protected indefinitely.
Consent from the former firm is the only condition under which the file may be used, and absent that consent the engineer must rebuild the selection method from published data and public correlations.
FE Reference Handbook — Ethics and Professional Practice: Intellectual Property
Why the other choices appear
- (B)Equates authorship with ownership, an error that ignores the work-for-hire principle governing material produced on firm time with firm resources.
- (C)Treats attribution as a substitute for permission, confusing the duty to credit others' work with the separate requirement of a license to use it.
- (D)Applies the expiry of an employment restraint to a property right, which does not lapse on the noncompete schedule.