IP protection for Albania employees: code, inventions and non-competes

The answer depends on whether the output is an invention or a work such as software, a design or a document. Article 135 of the Labour Code (Kodi i Punës) says that inventions an employee makes while performing contractual duties belong to the employer. Anything invented outside those duties belongs to the employee unless the two sides agree otherwise in writing, and that agreement needs notice to the employee and fair compensation.

Article 136 treats literary and artistic works, industrial designs and computer programs differently. It does not transfer ownership outright. It lets the employer use what the employee produced in the course of their duties to the extent that the purpose of the contract allows. For a firm whose value sits in a codebase, that wording is thinner than most founders expect.

So the first job in any Albanian employment contract for engineers, designers or analysts is to say plainly what passes, when it passes and to whom. The statute gives you a floor. The contract has to build the rest. That matters most for product companies, agencies building client software and research teams, where the thing being made is the asset. A sales team in Tirana selling an existing product carries far less risk, and its contracts can be lighter.

A use right tied to “the purpose of the contract” invites argument the moment the purpose changes. Suppose a backend developer in Tirana was hired to maintain a payments service and later writes a scheduling library that you want to sell separately. Whether that library falls within the original purpose is a question nobody wants to settle in court.

An express assignment avoids the debate. Good clauses for Albanian technical staff usually cover the following:

• Source code, object code, documentation, test suites and build scripts, in every version
• Designs, wireframes, data models and anything produced with the employer’s tools or time
• A promise to sign further documents if a registration or filing is needed later
• A description of side projects the employee keeps, listed at signing, so ownership of those is clear too
• Fair compensation wording for inventions made outside the job, matching Article 135

Write the clause into the contract itself rather than an annex nobody signs. Article 21 makes the written contract compulsory and allows the employer only 7 days after work begins to put its signature on one that was left unsigned. That short window is the natural moment to get the assignment wording agreed, before anyone has written a line of production code.

Side projects deserve a sentence of their own. Albanian developers often maintain open-source libraries or freelance tools from before the job started. Listing those in a schedule at signing protects the employee’s existing work and stops a later dispute about whether a commit at 11pm on a Sunday belonged to the employer.

Under an employer of record arrangement, the contract of employment is signed with the EOR rather than with you, and Articles 135 and 136 speak only of “the employer”. Whatever those articles grant therefore arrives at the EOR before it can reach your business. Your protection therefore has two links. The employment contract moves rights from the employee to the EOR, and the services agreement moves them from the EOR to you.

Read both documents side by side. The assignment in the employment contract should be at least as wide as the one in the services agreement, and the services agreement should pass everything on without a gap in time or scope. If either link is narrower, the missing piece stays where it is.

In practice this is simpler than it sounds. Your managers set priorities and review output, the code lives in repositories and tools that you own and administer, and the employment paperwork carries wording you have reviewed. If you want to see how the arrangement works as a whole, the plain-English explainer on how an EOR works in Albania sets out who signs which document, and Employer of Record Albania sets out the service in full.

One practical point: keep access rights under your own accounts from the first day. Ownership on paper means less if the only copy of a repository sits on a personal laptop.

Article 25 of the Labour Code obliges the employee to hand over to the employer everything received or produced under the contract. That covers documents, files, prototypes and data, and it gives you a statutory basis for an exit checklist rather than relying on goodwill.

Remote setups change how you apply it. Under Article 15, telework (telepunë) is work from home or another agreed place using IT, on terms set in the contract. Providing, installing and servicing the IT kit falls to the employer, except where the person has chosen to work on a personal device. If you supply the laptop, recovering it and the data on it is straightforward. If the person works on their own machine, the contract should say how work files are stored, synchronised and deleted when the job ends.

A confidentiality clause should name the categories you care about: client lists, pricing, unreleased product plans, credentials and source code. Pair it with access controls you can switch off on the last day. Notice matters here as well. When you give notice, the employee is entitled to at least 20 paid hours a week to look for a new job, so plan for reduced access during that period rather than a sudden cut-off.

Notice lengths themselves run from 2 weeks to 3 months depending on service, and the rules around dismissal are covered in the post on severance in Albania.

Articles 135 and 136 sit in the Labour Code, so they apply to employees. A self-employed developer invoicing your business from Durrës is not covered by them, and nothing passes to you unless the service contract says so in terms. Many firms discover this only when an investor’s lawyer asks for the chain of title on early code.

The fix for past work is a written assignment signed by the contractor, covering everything delivered to date. The fix for the future is harder, because calling someone a contractor decides nothing on its own. Under Article 12, where a relationship is unclear the court decides its true nature from how the work is done and paid. The income tax law, Law 29/2023, adds a separate test of its own: if 80% or more of a self-employed person’s income comes from one client, or 90% or more from fewer than three, that income is treated as employment income.

A contractor who works only for you, on your tools, to your schedule, may well be an employee in substance. In that case the Labour Code rules on IP, notice and pay apply anyway, and your carefully drafted service contract may not be the document a court reads first. The trade-offs are covered in the post on freelancer or employee status in Albania.

Moving a long-standing contractor onto an employment contract is often the cleanest way to settle both questions at once. The new contract can carry a full assignment, and a one-off deed can sweep up everything the person produced before the switch.

A non-compete (ndalimi i konkurrencës) in Albania is enforceable only within tight limits set by Articles 28 to 31. It must be in writing and signed by an employee over 18. It is valid only if the job gave access to manufacturing or business secrets whose use could seriously harm the employer, so a blanket clause in every contract will not hold for junior roles.

The restraint can last no more than 1 year and must define the place, the time and the activity it covers. Courts may cut a restraint that goes too far. On top of that, the former employee is owed at least 75% of their foregone salary for every month the restraint runs.

That last condition changes the economics. Take the senior developer from the site’s worked example on ALL 200,000 a month (about €2,174). A full twelve-month restraint costs at least ALL 150,000 a month, or ALL 1,800,000 over the year, roughly €19,569 at the October 2026 rate of ALL 91.98 to the euro. Most firms find that a shorter restraint, or none at all backed by strong confidentiality terms, is the better buy.

The clause also falls away in two situations: if the employer dismisses the person without justified cause, or if the employee resigns for a justified cause linked to the employer. A restraint is therefore only as strong as the way the employment ends. A dismissal that skips the Article 144 procedure, with its written invitation at least 72 hours before the meeting, risks undoing the clause along with everything else.

Most of the protection comes from a few documents drafted at the start, so the order of work matters more than the length of any one clause.

• Decide which roles touch secrets that could seriously harm you; only those justify a restraint
• Put the assignment, confidentiality and return-of-materials wording in the signed contract, not a policy
• Use the probation period, up to 3 months under Article 142, to stage access to sensitive systems
• Keep repositories, design files and cloud storage under accounts you control
• Match the services agreement to the employment contract so rights pass through without a gap
• Budget the 75% compensation before offering a non-compete, and set a period shorter than 1 year if that is enough

Contract terms in general, including what Article 21 says a written contract must contain, are covered in the guide to Labour Code contracts in Albania. The consolidated Code itself is published by the labour inspectorate on inspektoriatipunes.gov.al.

None of this needs an Albanian company of your own. It needs clear paper and sensible access control, set up before the first commit rather than after the first resignation.

Q01Does the employer automatically own code written by an Albanian employee?+

A.Not fully. Article 136 lets the employer use computer programs made in the course of duties to the extent the contract’s purpose allows. An express assignment clause in the employment contract is the safer route.

Q02What about inventions made outside working duties?+

A.They belong to the employee. The employer can acquire them only by written agreement, with notice to the employee and fair compensation, under Article 135.

Q03How much does a non-compete cost an employer in Albania?+

A.Compensation of no less than three quarters of the salary the person gives up, paid across the restraint, which can run for up to 1 year. On ALL 200,000 a month that is at least ALL 150,000 a month.

Q04Can a non-compete stop working after the job ends?+

A.Yes. It falls away if the employer dismisses without justified cause or if the employee resigns for a justified cause linked to the employer.

Q05With an EOR, who holds the IP first?+

A.The EOR, as the legal employer, receives the rights under the employment contract and passes them to you under the services agreement. Check that both documents cover the same scope.