Unless it was agreed upon and written into the contract that the code and all rights to the program were your clients then you have absolute right to sell the application. In fact it sounds like you have specifically reservered all rights to the application for yourself and the client has agreed to that and he only has a liscense to use the product. If the client tried to sell the application you would have a very good case against him not the other way around. I'm no lawyer but it sounds like the application is yours to do with as you please. Ethically (which is really not an issue when dealing with the law) I see now reason why you shouldn't try to make some money off the product.

Also I don't think it would really matter how specific the specifications for the product were. If the client puts no restrictions on the contract concerning the source code and you are an independent contractor then all the source code and all the rights to the application are yours especially if you specifically state that fact and the client agrees.

>Hi everyone,
>
>I've recently completed a medical application, which took more than a year to complete (on and off kind of work). All of the conceptual design, planning, and development was done by myself. The client's contribution was to provide me with knowledge about his particular specialty, the specific types of data to be included, and the types of studies that he wanted to perform with the completed application. Although, it took about a year for me to find out exactly what I needed to know. A lot of trial and error was involved, which lost me quite a bit of money. The client was extremely difficult to work with, and it was like pulling teeth to get information from him. I admit that I have not been in this business for too long, so it's taken a few bad experiences for me to learn how to design a contract that doesn't lose me money.
>
>Anyway, now that I've completed the contract, I've been considering selling copies of this application to other doctors in the same field as my former client. The application opens with a legal statement, which specifies that I own all rights to the application, and that the doctor has only purchased a license to use the application. The statement also states that by using the application, the user agrees to everything in the legal statement (which states that I own all rights).
>
>Here are my questions: Is it unethical for me to sell this application to others, since I was specifically contracted to build this application for this particular doctor(client)? Should I ask the client's permission before doing this? Is there any way that I could be sued for selling this without his permission?
>
>To the best of my knowledge, I own all legal rights to my code and designs. I'm assuming that it would be a different case if the client gave me specific blue prints as to how he wanted the software to specifically appear and function. However, I performed about 98 percent of the conceptual design for this application. The client basically had no idea what the end product would look like, and how most of it would function. He only provided me with the most basic information, and left everything else to me. The complexity was tremendous, since I had to design a user interface and structure to capture and manage many sources of medical data. I lost a lot of money on this project, and I would like to try and recover some of it. However, I don't want to do anything unethical.
>
>Has anyone else sold copies of their custom applications? Any comments as to whether this is ethical or unethical??
>
>Thanks for any comments and advice
>
>Dave