| I didn't see any mention of copyright. In the US in almost all cases the interviewee will not be an employee of the company and writing the code within the scope of their employment, and so the code will not automatically be a "work for hire". That means that the interviewee will own the copyright of the code they write. This is something you will want to think about if you are the employer and considering coding requirements during interviews whether take-home or in-person. It could be bad news if some interviewee's code ended up in production (accidentally or on purpose) and you did not own the copyright. If you want to own the code that interviewees write, there are two approaches. The most reliable approach would be to get them to sign an agreement assigning the copyright of anything they write for the interview to you. This will require a contract so don't just wing it. Get your company's lawyer to write it. The other approach is to try to make it a work for hire. If you succeed then the copyright is yours as soon as the interviewee writes it. For this you need three things: 1. A written agreement signed by the interviewee and the company saying that the code will be a work for hire. 2. The code must be specifically ordered or commissioned. 3. It must fall into one of 9 specific categories of works. #1 should be easy, but get your lawyer to write the agreement. #2 should also be easy if you do a decent job of specifying the assignment you give the interviewee. #3 might be difficult. For a long time software was not thought to fall into any of the categories and so could not be a work for hire unless developed by an employee. But a few years ago some courts decided that it could fall into a couple of them. I haven't kept up with developments since then and so don't know if this is now settled. The usually recommendation I've seen is to have your work for hire agreement also include a copyright assignment agreement in case the work turns out not to be a work for hire. |