There are a lot of knee-jerk reactions here that may very well be completely justified - but the facts are that we don't know where Nick works and in what capacity. We can't know if there is legitimate concern over IP or competitive advantage here? It's unlikely, but for the sake of a thought experiment: What if Nick's employers sell a JS component that does the same+10% as chart.js?
EDIT: Apparently he made it before starting his job. Yes, that makes it quite a bit more fishy.
He built it during University, so before he started working for the employer. They may have a legitimate business concern, but that doesn't change the fact that it's Nick's IP and he can do what he wants with it.
That's true if and only if he didn't continue to refine and contribute to the code after entering employment, and specifically, didn't use it at his place of employment.
Many places have terrible and unhealthy, but legally binding contracts regarding work done in your own time while employed. :(
Without more information we can't know, but its far from given that their position is legally ambiguous.
I've seen employment contracts that try to claim IP developed before you even took the job. Probably completely unenforceable, but I really wish that over-reaching contracts like that were punishable to prevent the ultra-conservative "ask for everything, and maybe get less" approach.
"That's true if and only if he didn't continue to refine and contribute to the code after entering employment, and specifically, didn't use it at his place of employment."
The same could be applied in reverse: if he wrote a considerable part of the code before entering employment and did use it at his place of employment, what does it say about the employer's right to use it? Or is it "since you're working here now, we can use all you ever wrote exclusively even if you didn't license it to us"?
Without a specific licence there would be an implicit contract that the employer could use the library for any projects that Nick has used the library on.
If after Nick leaves they would be on shaky ground if they used it on other projects that Nick hadn't worked on.
IANL but that's my understanding of the law in the UK.
Agreed, but he's based in the UK, so the 'we own all your IP' thing doesn't apply here. On company time yes, in your own time I believe not. Your own time would not be "in the course of his or her employment."
I've seen employment contracts in the UK that try the "own time" thing - these are probably not enforceable, but you probably wouldn't want to go through the process of putting that to the test.
It is widespread practice in the UK for "a certain type of organisation" to include a blanket IP clause in their standard employment contracts. I don't know of any robust legal argument that such a clause should not be enforceable (which isn't to say that none exists, but I've been involved in some fairly heavy negotiations on this score in the past and no lawyer on either side has ever questioned that aspect to my knowledge).
If you choose to work for that type of organisation, it is therefore similarly widespread practice for anyone who's any good to demand that the clause be replaced with something more equitable, probably using magic words like "in the course of your employment" or something similar.
I don't know what default rules apply under all possible circumstances in the absence of any explicit agreement, but if you work in an IP-related field and don't have an explicit agreement about IP rights in your contract, you're crazy. :-)
What I actually meant was the kind of company, usually large, often foreign-owned, where HR is run by droids who think creative people are interchangeable commodities whose souls should rightfully belong to the company 24/7 in return for paying their salary.
If they're smart enough to let the managers who need to get real work done override the paranoia of the corporate legal and HR departments, they can still hire good people by allowing flexibility in the contract when these over-reaching terms are almost inevitably challenged.
Some places just won't deviate from their standard contract and if you want a job with them then you just have to suck it up. Strangely, I don't know many good creative people who work for those places.
Definitely worth doing that as it is actually a lot more common in the UK for these clauses to be part of any developer's contract than what people realize.
It's a trickier area. Post-docs are usually paid, so the universities have a clear work-for-hire claim. Because Undergrad students aren't usually paid, it's a much harder claim to make (
I'm aware of post-doc agreements being litigated and upheld, but am not aware of any litigation on the undergrad side.
EDIT: Apparently he made it before starting his job. Yes, that makes it quite a bit more fishy.