“And… Send!” Pia gleefully said to herself as she pressed the Send key on her laptop. She had reasons to be happy. She had just responded to Amita, the lousy HR person who had participated in making her life miserable at Yuvi, her ex-employer.

Pia had joined the team a little over a year ago. She was a very enthusiastic content writer who brought her bubbly personality and inherent enthusiasm to her work. Her content was always positive, funny, and most importantly – successful.

Her posts got great engagement and her witty one-liners were often shared.

This led to her bosses noticing her within 2 months. The CEO, Apsara, had invited her to coffee in her office!

Over coffee, Apsara had been genuinely interested in getting to know her. She had asked about her family, hometown, education, hobbies, everything!

Just as they were at their last few sips, an idea had suddenly occurred to Apsara – “Pia, I have an idea. Would you like to do a Masterclass for the rest of our content team? This will do two good things – one, instead of being jealous of you, they will start to see you as a natural expert, and also understand how you are the tops in whatever you do. Two, it will help you share some of that bubbly personality with others while adding “Training” as a skill on your resume. How does that sound?”

Pia had been thrilled.

Within two weeks, she had prepared a course outline and some course content. Another two weeks, and she was ready to roll!

The training head sat with her on her course for a while and suggested that she should use innovative training content like memes, cases, puzzles, as assessment instead of and old-fashioned test at the end of the program.

This took her another month to prepare, but finally the Training head had been absolutely delighted with her work and had given the Go Ahead!

Pia ran this course for the first batch and it was a smash hit!

The CEO called her and hugged her. Then, she encouraged Pia to add “Trainer” to her Linkedin profile skills.

The second batch was a runaway success too. After that, Pia’s course had been added to the induction for all content team joinees. She ran the program every two months.

Pia thought it was natural to expect that this would lead to a promotion or at least a raise.

However, neither was forthcoming. When she tried to broach the subject with her manager, she got the usual spiel about how everyone needs to show commitment to advance in their career. HR was not much helpful either.

In short, Pia became the de facto subject matter expert of her team, but that translated into no role, salary, or even designation change.

That, and other things at work led to Pia slowly getting disengaged from her workplace.

8 months into the role, she started looking around and in a couple of months, she found a role that suited her better.

She resigned and her resignation was received with.. well, resignation.

The boss made some customary noises about being disappointed and her having a bright future with the company, but made no real effort to retain her or even ask for her real reasons for leaving. Amita, her HR Business Partner, was equally distant and uninterested in having a conversation.

Pia completed her notice period, and on the last day, packed her bags and left.

Two weeks later, her phone rang.

“Hey Pia.. How are you doing?” A chirpy Amita sounded on the other end.

If Pia was surprised, she did not show it, “Am good Amita. What’s up?”

“We were missing you here ya. Hope you’ve settled in fine at the new place?”

“Don’t worry about that. Why did you call?” Pia asked.

“Well, you know, we needed to run the next training batch for new content writers, and we can’t find your training material!”

“Oh, that’s because I took it with me. It’s not there.” Pia said casually.

“You-took-it-with-you?” Amita repeated slowly.

“Yeah!” Pia replied.

“You can’t do that! You made that material while working for the company, so its company property.” Amita’s tone was not exactly aggressive, but it was getting unfriendly pretty fast.

“Errm, actually, I am the creative owner of this content, so I have every right to take it with me. The company has no right to content that I made as a favour to Yuvi.” Pia held her ground.

“I’ll get back to you.” Amita had been quick to disconnect.

A day later, Pia found an email in her inbox. It was from a legal services firm, telling her that she was being sued for stealing the company’s intellectual property without permission. Since the content had been created by her during and in course of her employment with Yuvi, it was covered under the term “Work Product”. As per law, the intellectual rights to work products created by employees rest with the employer by default. 

Pia smiled. She had been expecting this. First, she posted the aggressive email received from Yuvi on Reviewer.com – a website to review one’s employers. Then, she sent an email to her HR, marking a copy to her manager and the CEO. The email said:

Dear Team at Yuvi

The content in question is training material. My designation at Yuvi was “Content Writer”. This role does not include the creation of Training Content. Only work done as part of the role is a work product. This content was created by me – not as a part of my work profile. It was shared with the organisation as an act of kindness. Any content created that is not in my work role cannot be a “work product”. I have kindly allowed the organisation royalty free access to the content as well as my services as a trainer without charging for these services.

If my designation had changed to include Trainer in the work profile, any content created by me AFTER such designation change would revert to the organisation on my resignation as “Work product”. However, both these events did not occur.

Therefore, I am the absolute owner of the training content and methodology, being its sole developer and disseminator.

You are hereby instructed to refrain from the use of the training content, or parts thereof, as well as the unique pedagogy developed for this module. Using any part of such content subjects you to potential royalty payments to the original creator.

This includes but is not limited to memes, handouts, assignments, etc. used in the past as part of the trainings.

Sincerely

Pia.

 “And… Send!” Pia gleefully said to herself as she pressed the Send key on her laptop.

Questions for you

1. Which side do you agree with? Why?

2. If the designation had changed to include “Trainer” without any hike in salary, would the contention of Pia hold? Why or why not?

3. In the normal course of events, under what circumstances should the intellectual property created by employees belong to the employer? Discuss your thoughts.