Module 3 Exercise: The Freelancer’s Second App

Study exercise. Invented company. Not a pleading.

Scenario

NaijaFintech Ltd in Lagos hired a freelance engineer in Kaduna to build a loan-routing engine. The contract was a generic freelance form: ₦4,000,000 to “deliver the completed loan software module.”

The engineer uploaded the code to GitHub, was paid, and left. Six months later the company finds two things. The core calculation uses a modified structure under a GPL-style copyleft licence. And the engineer has launched a rival lending app in Abuja, saying that without an assignment they still own the code.

Write

A study memo of about 600 words to the board:

1. Who holds copyright on the facts you were given, and what that means for the rival app.
2. What the copyleft component does to the story that the engine is a proprietary asset.
3. Three paragraphs the company can use next time: present assignment, a repository named in the clause, and a warranty against copyleft that would force the product open.