Employee/Employer Intellectual Property question

This question cannot be answered without knowing more about your particular situation. Most importantly, an attorney will need to review any agreements that you had with your former employer. This may not be entirely straightforward. For example, employment agreements with universities often contain a provision incorporating the intellectual property rights provisions from their employee handbook. The provisions in the employee handbook can be very restrictive in the area of patent rights. So, the difficulty is in determining what the employer and employee agreed to do with employee inventions, if the employee does not have a copy of all of the agreements executed with the employer. In the absence of a signed agreement, there might be a state law, union agreement or national law that obligates assignment of inventions to an employer. The best advice is to find a good attorney who can look at all of facts in your particular case.

Please note that this answer does not constitute legal advice specific to your situation, and that no attorney-client relationship is formed by my provision of this answer.

As Mr. Paradies mentions, the answer to your question is likely going to be determined primarily by the content of any agreement that you may have signed while working with your employer. Employment agreements will typically specify who owns various types of intellectual property that is developed, and when they might own it. Software companies are particularly inclined to have agreements covering intellectual property rights to developments of their employees. I should also add that many software companies have non-competition clauses that might be broad enough to prevent you from working on something that is similar to anything you worked on while at the company. I have even seen agreements in Massachusetts that give the company ownership of your developments, up to a year after your departure, if the developments relate to something that you worked on while at the company.

Some other relevant information you should share with a qualified attorney in your area would include: (1) The nature of your relationship to the software company in question. If you were only a contractor and not an employee, then in absence of an agreement, your ownership of certain developments (namely, those made under copyright) would be dependent upon this fact. (2) The nature of the "concept" that you would like to utilize. Depending on what it is you want to utilize, different types of intellectual property protection may be relevant. If it is only a very vague, high-level idea you wish to use, then patent and invention rights may be the only relevant ones. If there are specific routine, architectures, or code examples you wish to use, then copyright could be pertinent. If the material in question is highly guarded by the company, then trade secret law might be relevant. Again, all of these issues would then have to be examined in the context of any agreement you might have, and under the relevant type of intellectual property law that would apply, at both the federal and Massachusetts level.

I know it is frustrating not to get a simple, clear answer to your question. However, even though the analysis is quite complex, if an experienced attorney were to have all of the relevant information on your particular situation, a fairly concrete answer would be possible to get to fairly quickly. I wish you the best of luck in your software development projects!

See Mr. Paradies' answer. It all comes down to the language in your employment agreement. Usually companies require all creations and intellectual property be assigned to the company. As stated above, though, someone would have to look at the agreement.