copyright contract-law intellectual-property data-protection investment
Do investors have any copyrights on the application they invest on?
<p>Considering I am the founder of Instagram, it means I have written 100% of the application code by myself, then found an investor and they put some money into the startup and got 30% of the new established company's shares.</p>
<p>Then I decided to make some modifications and change some of the ideas and create another app/company by only myself and name it TikTok! In this new application I may have used some of the codes from my previous app as they have lot of similarities and also the previous app is written by me and I don't know how to write a similar code in a different way! And obviously there are similar ideas between this new TikTok app and my previous Instagram application.</p>
<p><em><strong>Is it possible for the investor of the first app suing me for using some similar codes or ideas to create my new app?</strong></em></p>

<p>First of all being the &quot;founder&quot; of a startup in no way implies that one wrote all the code of the startup's primary or signature app. The founder could have hires coders, or had partners, or used open source code.</p>
<p>But let's make some assumptions. Suppose Alice has created a startup, and wrote the code for an application.   Suppose Bob invested in the startup, and got 30% of the stock, What rights does Bob have to the copyright on the code?</p>
<p>It depends entirely on what agreements Alice has made.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Alice <strong>might</strong> have sold or assigned the copyright to her startup firm, call that F1, If so,  F1 owns the copyright, and Alice can't reuse it without F1's permission. If Alice has retained the other 70% of F1, she controls it and can have it grant her whatever permissions she likes. But if she has sold or assigned a majority shore to investors, she will need to persuade the management of F1, or a majority of the shareholders, to grant her permission.</p>
</li>
<li><p>Alice <strong>might</strong> have merely licensed the code to F1. In this case she retains the copyright. If the license was not exclusive, she can use the code as she pleases, but so can  F1, in accord with the license.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>In neither case does Bob directly own the copyright, or a share in it, unless a separate agreement granted or sold that to him. But he has a right to a share of the profits, if any that F1 makes, and a right to vote on decisions that 1 makes, long with other owners of  F1</p>
<p>If Alice never formally transferred or licensed the software to F1, she still owns the copyright and can do as she pleases, even if shew sold most or al of F1</p>
<p>Note that to transfer a copyright there must (under US law) be a written and signed document, one signed by the owner or the owner's agent. It must specifically indicate what copyright(S) it transfers. A purchase of an interest in a business does not suffice without such a document.</p>
