When you work for big companies this is a lot more straight forward. IBM makes you sign an intellectual property agreement with an air tight "no compete" clause.
I wrote a couple programs on my own time to make my job easier. I was not really even a programmer but IBM went out of their way to point out to me, they owned those programs.
In the case of the online test program, they said it was so our competition couldn't use it. I really think it was just to remind everyone, they owned your thoughts.
