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Ask HN: Post Employment Copyright and Patent Assignment

2 points by falcolas ↗ HN
I've been looking for employment of late, and I've started to see the standard copyright and patent assignment clauses gaining new teeth: they want to claim your work for an additional year after employment - no matter whether you're fired, quit, or laid off.

"Employee will also promptly disclose in writing to Company all [discoveries, work, etc. applicable to our business, made] by Employee within 12 months after termination of Employee’s employment for any reason."

This seems excessive to me; it seems like an attempt to work around the failing "no working for our competitors" agreements. I also don't recall seeing it in previous agreements. Anyone else seeing this? Anyone else have major concerns about the effect this will have on employment?

2 comments

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noonespecial
They can write anything they want. It rarely will cost you the job if you object. They just hope you just accept it without question.

I encountered this once so far. I told them I would agree but it would cost $50k to reserve my talent for that (6 months in my case) time. Payable up front at signing. The HR guy laughed, crossed it out, initialed it and said "yeah, sorry about that..." And that was the end of it.

davismwfl
Object to it, if they push back then it is likely a company to really look hard at whether they share your values.

Likely this is something an attorney suggested and stuck in there and if no one objects it just goes on by. If the company is decent they will strike that clause if you object. If they don't then take a pass or state they have to compensate you for that time as it is not reasonable otherwise, again if they object say no thanks their terms are not realistic or fair.

I contracted with a company last year that initially had a clause that said I was barred from working with any sensor or sensor like device for the term of 2 years following the end of the contract. First, it likely isn't enforceable in the US, but second I said no thanks that is completely unreasonable and no reasonable engineer would ever agree to that clause. They struck it but then tried to sneak in something later when the contract was concluding, trying to get me to sign a post contract agreement stating nearly the same. Horrible people, and the entire contract sucked and they still are a pain in my ass a year later. I knew it in my gut they were a bad client, but I ignored it and took the deal anyway. That was one of the worst mistakes in the past 4-5 years I had made, so listen to your gut.