Florida resident Richard Bullard wants to keep his software and his good name. He was arrested last year on charges that he attempted to extort $25,000 from the Okaloosa County Property Appraiser’s Office, but a recent court ruling appears to be on his side.
Bullard’s legal troubles began shortly after he retired from the Property Appraiser’s Office in July 2015. During his employment there, he developed a computer program that extracted information from the office’s database, which employees used to compile reports.
According to his arrest report, prior to departing, Bullard inserted a licensing key into the program that only he could unlock. When his former co-workers discovered they were locked out of the program, he informed them that he had designed the program to quit working, and that he would need to be compensated $25,000 if they wanted to continue to use it.
Bullard’s argument was that he designed the program, so he had ownership rights to it. The Property Appraiser’s Office disagreed, stating because Bullard had designed the program on work time, they owned the rights to it.
“Basically, it was a question of ownership of intellectual property,” Bullard’s attorney, West Ritchie, told The Northwest Florida Daily News. “When he left, the Property Appraiser’s Office believed they owned the software. But writing a computer program was outside the scope of his employment, and Judge Brown was very specific in his order that he had a right to the software.”
Judge John T. Brown dismissed the charge against Bullard. The State Attorney’s Office declined to appeal the judge’s ruling, and now Bullard has asked Ritchie to send a “cease-and-desist” order to the Property Appraiser’s Office, demanding they stop using the software immediately if they haven’t already done so.