business licensing
Referring to Software Engineering in a US state that licenses engineers
<p>This is strictly hypothetical for the moment and I will retain qualified legal counsel before making any real-world decisions. This question is only to get a general idea of what to expect.</p>
<p>Suppose I live in a state that licenses the practice of professional engineering, and I want to start up an LLC to do freelance computer programming work. Suppose there is in force and effect, as there is in the state of Alabama (not where I live, but my state's statute looks similar - see <a href="http://www.bels.alabama.gov/pdf/laws/LawCode-July2014.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.bels.alabama.gov/pdf/laws/LawCode-July2014.pdf</a>) a law which stipulates, roughly, the following:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In order to safeguard life, health, and property, and to promote the public welfare, the
practice of engineering in this state is a learned profession to be practiced and regulated
as such, and its practitioners in this state shall be held accountable to the state and
members of the public by high professional standards in keeping with the ethics and
practices of the other learned professions in this state. It shall be unlawful for any
person to practice or offer to practice engineering in this state, as defined by this
chapter, <strong>or to use in connection with his or her name or otherwise assume, use, or
advertise any title or description including, but not limited to, the terms engineer,
engineers, engineering, professional engineer, professional engineers, professional
engineering, or any modification or derivative thereof, tending to convey the impression
that he or she is a professional engineer unless the person has been duly licensed or is
exempt from licensure under this chapter</strong>. A person whose firm name shall have
contained the word “engineer,” “engineers,” or “engineering,” or words of like import, for
more than 15 years before September 12, 1966, shall not be prohibited from continuing
the use of such word or words in his or her firm name.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Suppose that my undergraduate college degree is in Computer Science and the program is regionally accredited and accredited by the ABET-CAC standards before I enrolled and that the program has continuously maintained that accreditation. Suppose further that I received a Master's degree in &quot;Computer Science and Software Engineering&quot; the accreditation status of which w.r.t. ABET is not given. Finally, suppose I have not taken or passed Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) or Principles and Practice of Engineering (PE) exams and have neither applied for nor obtained professional licensure in my current state.</p>
<p>Finally, my questions:</p>
<blockquote>
<ol>
<li><p>Can the name of my LLC include the phrases &quot;Software Engineer&quot;, &quot;Software Engineering&quot;, or similar derivations thereof?</p>
</li>
<li><p>Can my resume, curriculum vitae, or my advertising or promotional materials accurately report the subjects I studied in college as the subject matter of &quot;Software Engineering&quot;, to the extent that this information is true and accurate?</p>
</li>
<li><p>If asked directly by a client, am I even allowed to divulge my area of study accurately, or would it be a violation of the law to claim I had engineering knowledge since I have studied (and practiced) software engineering in the past (for instance, at previous places of work in states which did not have these kinds of limitations, or for corporations which did not offer my services to the general public)?</p>
</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p>My intuition says that I can't be penalized simply for speaking the truth, but clearly there is some behavior the law is intending to prevent. Would the use of he phrase &quot;Software Engineering&quot;, generally speaking, be a way to skirt these kinds of regulations in states that might typically only think of engineering licensure as applying to, e.g., civil/mechanical/etc. kinds of engineers? Note that until very recently (and perhaps even now) there's not really a realistic option for most practicing software professionals to pass the FE, as it covers topics not typically required of computer science or software engineering students (at least at the time I was in school).</p>
<p>EDIT: Follow-up question:</p>
<blockquote>
<ol start="4">
<li>Am I even allowed to practice &quot;Software Engineering&quot; in such a state if I call it, for instance, &quot;Computer Programming&quot; or &quot;Software Development&quot; instead? Or is the very activity of practicing something that could be called &quot;engineering&quot; restricted?</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p>This is a possibility that also occurred to me but I would find this somewhat harder to believe.</p>

<p>Can the name of my LLC include the phrases "Software Engineer", "Software Engineering", or similar derivations thereof?</p>

<p>No. Not based on what you've posted. Go to the definitions to see how engineer is defined. It may be they are talking about actual structural engineers or environmental engineers, where if you're wrong people die. But based on above, you can't use the word engineer unless you're licensed as such. Is there even a license for computer engineer? This seems more like it could be a term of use but not actually descriptive of what you're doing. IDK. You'd have to see the definitions and exceptions.</p>

<p>Can my resume, curriculum vitae, or my advertising or promotional materials accurately report the subjects I studied in college as the subject matter of "Software Engineering", to the extent that this information is true and accurate?</p>

<p>Yes, your CV is supposed to say what you have done, and learned and especially published (lest it's just a resume), but the answer as far as promotional materials, is NO. This, because you don't post your cv on your ad's and if you put that, you will likely be found to be trying to pose as a licensed professional based on a technicality. If that happens the licensing authority will probably censure you by disallowing a license when your qualify.</p>

<p>If asked directly by a client, am I even allowed to divulge my area of study accurately,(of course, but you'd also have to divulge the fact that you are not licensed and cannot act in that capacity)</p>

<p>Would it be a violation of the law to claim I had engineering knowledge since I have studied (and practiced) software engineering in the past (for instance, at previous places of work in states which did not have these kinds of limitations, or for corporations which did not offer my services to the general public)? It could be if the person reports that you are soliciting work as an engineer w/out a license.</p>

<p>It's like a person who went to law school, passed the bar, but never got sworn in. They cannot solicit business as a lawyer. </p>

<p>Unless there is a license for being a computer programer, there is nothing barring you from using that terminology.</p>

<p>You could be, that if you look up the definition prior to the statue, that it says something like "for the purposes of this section the term engineer means…", In which case it doesn't even apply to you.</p>
