I told my boss I had an idea for a program that could improve efficiency across much of the business, and he let me build it on company time. In the long term, he wanted to be able to sell it to other companies. However, the program never got implemented due to personnel mismanagement, and I’d rather be able to post it on my github under a free licence so I can use it as a resume item, and at least someone would have the chance to actually use it. It’s all still in my head, and I could write it again if I wanted. If I do, is it illegal to publish it? What if I write it in a different language? Do I need to change the variable names? I did plenty of research and planning on company time to build it, and it’s not like I can research it again, it’s all still in my head.
Without any patern on the idea, on what the programming does, a program doing the same thing can be done.
On the intellectual property theft, the new program should be as much as different as the other one. Different name, different functions, different var, different language, etc. This is to avoid any possible mismatch between the 2 programs. As long as you don’t take the code but rewrite it you should be fine.
Talking to a lawyer is mandatory in this case.