Very often, yes. The boilerplate IP contracts provided by most law firms usually claims one of:
* All software development work you ever do while employed by the company.
* All software development work you do using in any way any resource of the company, from computer to network connection.
* All software development work you do related to the business of the company that employs you.
* All software development work you do that isn't explicitly listed in an exhibit of exceptions you, the employee, fill out.
Before you start asking how enforceable this stuff is, note that unlike with noncompetes (which usually aren't practically enforceable), the way this issue is going to come up is, you're going to try to start a company, and your first official act of business is going to be to start defending yourself against legal actions from your employer that will torpedo any chance you have of getting funding for the year or so it takes for those actions to resolve themselves.
So, 'grellas may chime in and say "don't worry about this", in which case ignore me, but I wouldn't dick around with this issue. If my IP contract precluded me from working on my next company project, I'd get a clarified official path to working on it from my employer, and leave if one wasn't provided.
This also varies somewhat by state; there's a law in California (Labor Code section 2870[1]) that bars employers from claiming work that an employee does "on his or her own time without using the employer's equipment, supplies, facilities or trade secret information" unless the invention relates directly to the employer's business. I'd still check with a lawyer, though, even if in California --- and if elsewhere, most states are a lot less generous.
There was also a similar clause in my washington employment contract. The law even states that the clause must be put in all contracts and still applies if it doesn't.
It may be harder than you expect to establish that you're not in a business related to your former employer, at least to the extent that you can quickly end a legal action; all I'm saying is, that legal safeguard may not be as helpful as you'd hope.
Particularly if the employer is someone like Microsoft or Google that does, well... a little of everything. As I said, it's definitely worth consulting a lawyer before taking anything for granted.
You're absolutely right. There are really two questions here:
* Does my employer own this?
* Will they make me prove that in court?
The damnable thing is that, even if you really do own your work, having to prove that you own it in court may kill your startup by making you run out of money.
The other way of looking at your latter point: I try to work for people who would brag about successful former employees. Enlightened managers cultivate an "alumni network."
I'm pretty sure Oracle is a good example of a company that makes you agree that they own everything you think of while employed by them.
A friend of mine became an Oracle employee when the company he worked for got acquired, and ended up needing to get approval from a long way up the org chart to be able to continue doing his phd, since the university had existing claims on ip in his phd research.
For quite a long time he described himself as " technically not being allowed to think anything..."
It's not oracle specificaly it's that if you are say a structural ironworker during the day and make bronze sculptures as a hobby then a judge will understand they are different.
But they might not understand that being a sysadmin is as different to being a web designer in the evening.
As I understand it, Oracle's standard employment agreement includes language saying you agree that Oracle owns every idea you have while employed by them, whether on "paid hours" or not, whether related to databases or software in general or not - if you're a database engineer for Oracle and you invent a better tap washer, Oracle seem to think they'll own your plumbing related invention. There's workarounds for at least limited exceptions to that standard rule, but it's apparently unusual and required signoff at many levels above the typical workers management.
But the point is that most large companies will, on general principle, have you sign a piece of paper giving them everything they can imagine getting from you. Then it's up to you to figure out what existing laws says you can take back.
Even if your company doesn't sue you immediately, the fact that the intellectual property might be of questionable ownership can also mess up fundings or acquisitions down the road. If a company is looking to buy you and realizes that there's a chance of BigCorp claiming ownership of some piece of your IP because you signed a bad employment contract, it's going to be one more reason for them to say no to the deal.
Not in California; we have a state law that specifically addresses (and forbids) this kind of behavior by companies. I'll let a poster over at the OP speak for me:
California is one state where their policy is NOT enforceable as far as their ownership. They may fire you over it but they won't own your work.
Then read your employment contract that you may have signed. It often contains legal terms like "work for hire", etc. that have explicit definitions. Make sure you read your contract after understanding these definitions.
The portions that are not easily enforceable include the following:
You contract may state that the agreement will continue to apply up to six months or one year after you terminate your employment. This provision is generally included by employers so as to prevent employees from coming up with patentable ideas or creating copyrightable works (like software) and "then" terminating their employment pretending none of that happened. Under that scenario, the IP you generate does indeed belong to the company.
On the other hand, if you start your work and develop IP strictly after terminating your employment, court will not honor "non-compete" clauses. This are designed to protect employees who are most likely to continue working in areas of their expertise, which is likely the same as what they were working on while they were employed.
The law specifically says that a company cannot claim to own your private work except under very specific conditions. If you, for instance, work for Zynga and develop a game that is very much modelled after a Zynga game, then Zynga has a case. If you develop a CRM for Patent Attorneys, Zynga has no case -- unless you developed the CRM while at work at Zynga.
Under that scenario, the IP you generate does indeed belong to the company.
Only if the "IP" falls under very specific guidelines. Writing an MMORPG at home while working at Zynga? No, Zynga can't claim squat. You don't need to wait to terminate employment in order to work on projects at home.
Absolutely. Along with the standard, "talk to a lawyer" advice, it's worth noting a few things:
1) Virtually every major technology company includes intellectual property assignment agreements in the paperwork they require new hires to sign. Most startups probably have the same policy, many perhaps without even knowing it, since its part of plenty of standard paperwork. Y Combinator's standard paperwork includes such a clause.
2) For all of the ones I've seen (and I imagine most respectable companies, and probably every company in California, for reasons to be mentioned), the paperwork claims ownership over anything developed a) during work hours, or b) using company owned equipment, resources, or IP, or c) anything that doesn't fall into the first two categories but that involves an area of business the company is active in, or has plans to be active in.
3) The reason California companies all have roughly the same language, is because those restrictions are what are specified in California state law. Given the nature of California in the tech industry, I would guess that influences what a lot of tech companies use as a general policy. The language is somewhat complicated by the third part of the equation, but generally I believe the company has to be able to show damages in such an instance.
4) There are no such general protections on the federal level, and I believe a majority of states do not offer those protections, meaning that in many states all work, and even in some cases all ideas, that you generate during your employment belong to your employer (if you signed a contract to that effect with the employer).
This seems like a fairly uninformed view of the Zuckerberg story. In the end, Facebook settled those claims for huge amounts of money (and only were able to because they in fact had huge amounts of money).
Very much state dependent, and very much modified by the employment agreement (if you had one) when you joined a company. You can, and should, strike any objectionable material from the employment agreement, have the HR person who is helping you with your first day paperwork sign off on the changes, make a copy of the document, have the HR person sign the copy acknowledging it is a true copy of what was signed, and put that somewhere safe.
If the company won't accept your changes, then that is your signal that not only do they intend to own IP rights to perhaps everything you have done or will do, they also intend to litigate for those rights which you will have signed over to them with the agreement.
That is a good time to decide if you want to work there or not.
For folks who are thinking about changing companys but have yet to make the jump, ask your future employer to give you a copy of the employment agreement before you accept their offer. Have it reviewed by a lawyer. That way you can find out before you give notice that you weren't going to work there anyway.
At least for tech employees there is enough demand on the hiring side to give you an advantage.
IANAL, but in the UK, unless you have a contract that specifically says otherwise, yes.
On the other hand, if the outside work provably used no employer resources, and provably is unrelated, then you can probably defend yourself against an action. But you really, really don't want to depend on that.
Get it sorted up front. Get an explicit agreement with your employer that non-competing work done without their resources and without impacting your work, belongs to you.
I've been told by a professional that "unrelated" generally means work that might be in a different profession - and that to a court, "computers" could be considered a single profession in this sort of case. Work done in the field of "computers" outside of work, and you work for a "computer" firm? Related. Ergo your employer owns the IP.
So yeah, don't depend on it. At all.
This is the advice I was given when verifying that I had the IP relating to my startup. To avoid any doubt, I got the IP signed over with a contract I paid a solicitor for. This cost money, but more importantly it helped that my former employer was willing to do this.
Thinking about it, this default is the sort of thing that stifles innovation. If the Government wants to promote innovation, perhaps they should change the rules.
UK legislation will only give an employer copyright if the work was created "in the course of his employment" (Chapter I section 11(2) of the act). So essentially if it's part of the job.
But I agree it's better to just get it agreed upfront.
IANAL, this is also for UK.
I as well was employed in the UK last year and had my contract checked by a lawyer. The contract contained few vague clauses regarding IP discovered during the term of the employment and some non competes with any business of the company or of the group companies. The lawyer confirmed the only safe route would be to have an explicit agreement providing me IP ownership and entrepreneurial freedom signed by the company.
Then it depends what your relation is to the company. Do you want to tell them you have more ambitions than being a loyal employee ? If your bosses are a 'general' management and not a founder etc., I very much doubt you will achieve anything positive yourself. I believe these contracts are a norm here from what I heard as well. (I quit in the end before starting my venture).
> IANAL, but in the UK, unless you have a contract that specifically says otherwise, yes.
Cite, please. Your claim directly contradicts formal advice I have received from multiple employment law specialists in the UK, on several occasions over the past few years, most recently last year.
You're right that it's always better to be clear in the contract anyway, though.
I'm, in the UK. My employment contract is quite specific on these things.
The company owns any IP I produce, and I'm forbidden from working on side projects... without permission from my manager. So given permission (in writing) to start a project, it'd then be all mine.
Agreeing these sorts of things prior to spending time/money on your own stuff should avoid most of these legal haggles.
It's a seller's market, don't take a job at a company with policies you don't agree with, regardless of how common they are or how enforceable they might be[1]. It's quite easy to find employers in the bay area that don't demand such things or will waive the clause.
Make sure to tell them why you didn't take the job.
[1] I suppose if it's clearly and completely unenforceable little harm is done
In some cases --- maybe a lot of them --- the board of directors requires the management team to operate from an approved boilerplate contract. I'm sure you can get anything overridden, but I wouldn't fly off the handle just because I saw an agreement like this.
are you speaking from experience? if so, i'm curious - is it that you confined your search to boston, or that people elsewhere were unwilling to relocate?
In general you should avoid signing the standard contracts at any job. I've always made changes to protect my after-hours work, and they've been okayed every single time.
I'm getting to the point where i don't want to sign any contracts with any future employer or client. At least, nothing but the bare minimum needed. NDA's, for example, increasingly look to me as a joke and more trouble than they're worth.
Have you worked at any large companies and had success with that? I'm used to dealing with people who don't know who wrote the agreement, have given it to thousands of others "without a problem", and treat me like I am a bit odd for actually reading it, let alone trying to change something.
Yes actually I've pushed changes back at companies like Cingular and AT&T, and semi-large consulting firms like NCS Tech, and others. The HR rep will usually think I'm odd, but it's saved my butt at least once, so it's worth a couple odd looks:)
Google, my employer, recently refused a request that I made to release as open source some software that I had been working on in my spare time and without using any of their resources, on they claim that my software would compete with one of their projects. :-(
There's a story in there. Did Google actually have any claims to the software you wrote? If not, then you wouldn't need their persmission (except that now that you asked, they could fire you for disregarding their "advice").
Thanks. I'd like to write about it but, sadly, there are some relatively confidential details there (e.g. information about the Google project that my software would be theoretically competing with) that I can't reveal publicly.
I'm not ready to give up my employment over this (though it does significantly lower the bar for what another organization would need to offer me in order for me to consider switching jobs :-().
Google even prevented one prominent C# expert from renewing his microsoft MVP once he went to work for them - and this was in europe where workers generally have some protection
You are speaking of the one and only Jon Skeet. I think this had something to do with the NDA Microsoft MVPs sign (MVPs get confidential access to future plans, early looks, etc)
California employment law most likely addresses an employee's "duty of loyalty" to their employer, even in the absence of a contract. This means that you won't compete with the company or work against its interests while remaining in the employ of the company.
On the one hand, it's not unreasonable that a company paying an employee to work for them should expect a certain degree of loyalty as long as they are taking a company pay cheque. That would reasonably include the employee not directly competing with their employer.
On the other hand, some employers are vast companies, and no one employee can possibly know everything that is going on. Is it really fair to penalise someone who creates a side project completely independently of work, just because it happens to relate to a company project of which the employee had no knowledge? If you allow that, without imposing a corresponding duty on the company to disclose everything they do to every restricted employee so that employees can understand the mutual obligations before making decisions that might be affected by them, doesn't that conflict with the most basic principles of contract law?
I work for ITA, which is being acquired by Google, and this is one way in which it's going to be a step down. ITA's noncompete is the narrowest I've seen; it only claims stuff that I do in the travel industry.
As a former ITA employee, I was amazed by how great the ITA inventions agreement was in this respect. It has set the bar for negotiations in my future employment negotiations.
People, this link talks about "inventions". Nothing else is included in this. Please do not generalize this to "work".
If you invent something while adhering to the statutes stated here, and write software implementing that invention, then the invention would belong to you. But the software doesn't! Software is subject to copyrights, not inventions.
IANAL, but I know there are existing cases. I confirmed it through a friend who's been doing HR here for years. So: either lawyers or HR people or both, I suppose.
It depends on what your contract says... I work for a firm that clearly states that whatever you do, if it involves their equipment, resources, or time, or knowledge gained while working with them, they have IP rights at that point. That being said, some companies allow you to do stuff on your own, e.g. work for a different client / project outside your billable hours, and they don't have rights to those products (as long as you're clearly showing that you're not using shared resources).
I recently came up against this sort of nonsense in a job interview. I do a lot of technological stuff in my spare time, so as soon as they mentioned that I would have to agree to stop engaging in such extra-curricular activities I ended the negotiations.
I wouldn't mind allowing a company to have rights over what I do on my own time as long as I get ownership rights over everything else the company is doing, regardless of whether I'm involved or not. Fair's fair.
I'm in sales and in my spare time I am creating a program for online data management(which will also create leads although they're B2B and my company does B2C). Can I use the "not work related" exemption or should I renegotiate my employment agreement? I work in Nevada. Thank you for any help you can give me.
PS: I am not a lawyer, although have done extensive online research on these issues.
1. "Not work related" gives you an incomplete picture (not related to who's work?). That it is not related to your work is not enough. It must not be related to the employer's line of work, or anticipated line of work. Even if one person in the company is working on a related item, the your work may belong to the company. Even if one person in the company is anticipating the same, you have a potential issue. (See item 3 below for a related issue.)
2. The normal meaning of "related" also should not be taken at face value. If you are making burgers for MacDonald's while making a software side project, you are likely to be OK (and I am guessing that McDonald's would make you sign an employment agreement for these issues also). If you are in sales for a technical company and are making a software, they can easily be considered to be "related" by your company or the court.
3. Keep in mind that in any case the onus of proving is on you, so you the legal costs of proving you are clean would fall on you. That also means that in case of trouble, the court may initially side the employer and wait for you to prove you are clean to turn to your side.
The advice in that forum is an illustration of why you should not believe legal advice that is given to you by non-lawyers. Much of it is wrong, dangerously so.
For example one person claims that by default what you do on your own time is owned by you. Sorry, that varies by jurisdiction and local laws. It is true in CA, but false in NY.
Several people claim that CA offers strong protections. That is true, but the protections are not nearly as strong as they are claiming.
And so on. If you, personally, care about this topic, talk to a good IP lawyer who knows the local laws for your state.
My reference was what I was informed was the law by multiple lawyers when I lived in New York. It is possible that I misunderstood or the rules have changed in the last decade, but I am pretty sure neither is the case. Still you should confirm this with a qualified attorney before accepting what I say as being absolutely true.
More precisely I was told that New York recognizes 3 types of employee relationships. They are hourly, contractor, and professional employee. The first two are obvious. You are aware if you have to punch in on a clock, or are a contractor. The default for software development is therefore the third.
As a professional employee there are no set place or hours for your employment. (That is why you don't get overtime.) Therefore anything that you do that could possibly relate to your employment is by default assumed to be a work for hire that took place during the course of your employment. There are admittedly some complications there. If a programmer writes a novel, that's going to not be a work for hire. If a programmer writes a program, that's likely going to be a work for hire. But there are gray areas. For instance a VB programmer by day who works a C device driver for Linux by night might have a case that their side project doesn't relate to their employment.
But just in case, virtually every New York company makes sure that employees sign contracts that clarifies any possible ambiguity..in favor of the employer. So the reality is that if you live in New York, you can't assume that you own your side project.
Incidentally this is the reason that the FSF (which is very careful on intellectual property) requires that they get copyright assignment both from contributers and from the contributers' employers. Because they don't want to get into a situation where they think they have copyright, but someone else has a legal claim to copyright that code.
He doesn't explicitly state if his open source work was entirely done on his own time and equipment or done during down time at work or such, but it might be the case in his post there.
It's strange. As you probably know, the work for hire exception to copyright comes from the 1976 Federal Copyright Act. It doesn't extend to times when you are not at work, or have a 24/7 idea for professionals. It's also the case that nearly every state has hourly, contract and salary/overtime exempt employment categories, yet no other states I know of extend work for hire to off hours in the absence of a contract. If this doctrine can indeed be found in NY State Law, it would seem to be a state regulating something that only Congress has a right to regulate, which is copyright law (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8).
It would be really interesting to see the text of the NY state law on this, maybe I'll be able to find it some time.
Not in Canada they don't. The courts will look at every case individually but unless there is obvious malfeasance on behalf of the employee, any "we own you" contracts are unenforceable.
You should check out the Alberta employment standards office. It's goes the same for non-compete agreements, which are also hard to enforce north of the 49th.
I started writing an application 10 years before the formation of a UK Ltd company, and when I joined them I let them use it.
I ended up having to negotiate and buy said software from the liquidator when it failed because it was cheaper than fighting the claim in court to prove ownership.
Maybe, but if you don't actually create IP yourself -- you hire a contractor to do what you do at your day job -- you will stay in the clear and gain valuable experience.
Managing a contracted worker in your field of expertise, within the creative restriction that you cannot perform their work for them, is itself a highly educational exercise for someone with entrepreneurial interests.
That's all fine and good for legal reasons, but frankly the whole point of doing stuff in my free time is that I want to be the one doing it. Otherwise I wouldn't be doing it in my free time.
I get what you're saying from a financial and legal perspective, but it definitely does not solve the greater problem.
Yeah, I understand. You would think that employers would prize the kind of employee who wants to do the same thing in their spare time as they do at the office, wouldn't you?
And yet everywhere they are treated with suspicion.
While this has "open source" in the title, it's still an excellent book related to this topic.
Another good thing about this book is that it draws analogies between software source code and law statutes, making it very easy for software folks to understand these legal issues.
119 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 192 ms ] thread* All software development work you ever do while employed by the company.
* All software development work you do using in any way any resource of the company, from computer to network connection.
* All software development work you do related to the business of the company that employs you.
* All software development work you do that isn't explicitly listed in an exhibit of exceptions you, the employee, fill out.
Before you start asking how enforceable this stuff is, note that unlike with noncompetes (which usually aren't practically enforceable), the way this issue is going to come up is, you're going to try to start a company, and your first official act of business is going to be to start defending yourself against legal actions from your employer that will torpedo any chance you have of getting funding for the year or so it takes for those actions to resolve themselves.
So, 'grellas may chime in and say "don't worry about this", in which case ignore me, but I wouldn't dick around with this issue. If my IP contract precluded me from working on my next company project, I'd get a clarified official path to working on it from my employer, and leave if one wasn't provided.
[1] http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab...
* Does my employer own this?
* Will they make me prove that in court?
The damnable thing is that, even if you really do own your work, having to prove that you own it in court may kill your startup by making you run out of money.
If your day job is Oracle DBA and your startup is iPhone apps or web design that still equals the same "computer stuff" to a judge.
A friend of mine became an Oracle employee when the company he worked for got acquired, and ended up needing to get approval from a long way up the org chart to be able to continue doing his phd, since the university had existing claims on ip in his phd research.
For quite a long time he described himself as " technically not being allowed to think anything..."
But they might not understand that being a sysadmin is as different to being a web designer in the evening.
As I understand it, Oracle's standard employment agreement includes language saying you agree that Oracle owns every idea you have while employed by them, whether on "paid hours" or not, whether related to databases or software in general or not - if you're a database engineer for Oracle and you invent a better tap washer, Oracle seem to think they'll own your plumbing related invention. There's workarounds for at least limited exceptions to that standard rule, but it's apparently unusual and required signoff at many levels above the typical workers management.
Copyrightable works are not included, and so software isn't.
Reason for edit: Fixed typos.
But the point is that most large companies will, on general principle, have you sign a piece of paper giving them everything they can imagine getting from you. Then it's up to you to figure out what existing laws says you can take back.
California is one state where their policy is NOT enforceable as far as their ownership. They may fire you over it but they won't own your work.
Then read your employment contract that you may have signed. It often contains legal terms like "work for hire", etc. that have explicit definitions. Make sure you read your contract after understanding these definitions.
The portions that are not easily enforceable include the following:
You contract may state that the agreement will continue to apply up to six months or one year after you terminate your employment. This provision is generally included by employers so as to prevent employees from coming up with patentable ideas or creating copyrightable works (like software) and "then" terminating their employment pretending none of that happened. Under that scenario, the IP you generate does indeed belong to the company.
On the other hand, if you start your work and develop IP strictly after terminating your employment, court will not honor "non-compete" clauses. This are designed to protect employees who are most likely to continue working in areas of their expertise, which is likely the same as what they were working on while they were employed.
Reason for edit: Fixed some typos.
Under that scenario, the IP you generate does indeed belong to the company.
Only if the "IP" falls under very specific guidelines. Writing an MMORPG at home while working at Zynga? No, Zynga can't claim squat. You don't need to wait to terminate employment in order to work on projects at home.
1) Virtually every major technology company includes intellectual property assignment agreements in the paperwork they require new hires to sign. Most startups probably have the same policy, many perhaps without even knowing it, since its part of plenty of standard paperwork. Y Combinator's standard paperwork includes such a clause.
2) For all of the ones I've seen (and I imagine most respectable companies, and probably every company in California, for reasons to be mentioned), the paperwork claims ownership over anything developed a) during work hours, or b) using company owned equipment, resources, or IP, or c) anything that doesn't fall into the first two categories but that involves an area of business the company is active in, or has plans to be active in.
3) The reason California companies all have roughly the same language, is because those restrictions are what are specified in California state law. Given the nature of California in the tech industry, I would guess that influences what a lot of tech companies use as a general policy. The language is somewhat complicated by the third part of the equation, but generally I believe the company has to be able to show damages in such an instance.
4) There are no such general protections on the federal level, and I believe a majority of states do not offer those protections, meaning that in many states all work, and even in some cases all ideas, that you generate during your employment belong to your employer (if you signed a contract to that effect with the employer).
If it ever came to a dispute, id follow the guidance of mark zuckerberg and fight it out for the rights to my work.
If the company won't accept your changes, then that is your signal that not only do they intend to own IP rights to perhaps everything you have done or will do, they also intend to litigate for those rights which you will have signed over to them with the agreement.
That is a good time to decide if you want to work there or not.
For folks who are thinking about changing companys but have yet to make the jump, ask your future employer to give you a copy of the employment agreement before you accept their offer. Have it reviewed by a lawyer. That way you can find out before you give notice that you weren't going to work there anyway.
At least for tech employees there is enough demand on the hiring side to give you an advantage.
On the other hand, if the outside work provably used no employer resources, and provably is unrelated, then you can probably defend yourself against an action. But you really, really don't want to depend on that.
Get it sorted up front. Get an explicit agreement with your employer that non-competing work done without their resources and without impacting your work, belongs to you.
Otherwise it's murky and dangerous.
I've been told by a professional that "unrelated" generally means work that might be in a different profession - and that to a court, "computers" could be considered a single profession in this sort of case. Work done in the field of "computers" outside of work, and you work for a "computer" firm? Related. Ergo your employer owns the IP.
So yeah, don't depend on it. At all.
This is the advice I was given when verifying that I had the IP relating to my startup. To avoid any doubt, I got the IP signed over with a contract I paid a solicitor for. This cost money, but more importantly it helped that my former employer was willing to do this.
Thinking about it, this default is the sort of thing that stifles innovation. If the Government wants to promote innovation, perhaps they should change the rules.
Edited to add: I'm in the UK.
But I agree it's better to just get it agreed upfront.
Then it depends what your relation is to the company. Do you want to tell them you have more ambitions than being a loyal employee ? If your bosses are a 'general' management and not a founder etc., I very much doubt you will achieve anything positive yourself. I believe these contracts are a norm here from what I heard as well. (I quit in the end before starting my venture).
Cite, please. Your claim directly contradicts formal advice I have received from multiple employment law specialists in the UK, on several occasions over the past few years, most recently last year.
You're right that it's always better to be clear in the contract anyway, though.
The company owns any IP I produce, and I'm forbidden from working on side projects... without permission from my manager. So given permission (in writing) to start a project, it'd then be all mine.
Agreeing these sorts of things prior to spending time/money on your own stuff should avoid most of these legal haggles.
Make sure to tell them why you didn't take the job.
[1] I suppose if it's clearly and completely unenforceable little harm is done
I'd love to hear cdibona's views on that.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970191
I'm not ready to give up my employment over this (though it does significantly lower the bar for what another organization would need to offer me in order for me to consider switching jobs :-().
On the one hand, it's not unreasonable that a company paying an employee to work for them should expect a certain degree of loyalty as long as they are taking a company pay cheque. That would reasonably include the employee not directly competing with their employer.
On the other hand, some employers are vast companies, and no one employee can possibly know everything that is going on. Is it really fair to penalise someone who creates a side project completely independently of work, just because it happens to relate to a company project of which the employee had no knowledge? If you allow that, without imposing a corresponding duty on the company to disclose everything they do to every restricted employee so that employees can understand the mutual obligations before making decisions that might be affected by them, doesn't that conflict with the most basic principles of contract law?
Unless I'm reading this wrong: if you work on it solely on your time, with your equipment, it's yours (in California, anyway).
UPDATE: Oh, also it can't compete with their business.
If you invent something while adhering to the statutes stated here, and write software implementing that invention, then the invention would belong to you. But the software doesn't! Software is subject to copyrights, not inventions.
Some companies try to put it in the contract, but it has no base in law and holds no legal obligations. I.e. you can ignore the clause safely.
Let me know if you figure something out!
1. "Not work related" gives you an incomplete picture (not related to who's work?). That it is not related to your work is not enough. It must not be related to the employer's line of work, or anticipated line of work. Even if one person in the company is working on a related item, the your work may belong to the company. Even if one person in the company is anticipating the same, you have a potential issue. (See item 3 below for a related issue.)
2. The normal meaning of "related" also should not be taken at face value. If you are making burgers for MacDonald's while making a software side project, you are likely to be OK (and I am guessing that McDonald's would make you sign an employment agreement for these issues also). If you are in sales for a technical company and are making a software, they can easily be considered to be "related" by your company or the court.
3. Keep in mind that in any case the onus of proving is on you, so you the legal costs of proving you are clean would fall on you. That also means that in case of trouble, the court may initially side the employer and wait for you to prove you are clean to turn to your side.
For example one person claims that by default what you do on your own time is owned by you. Sorry, that varies by jurisdiction and local laws. It is true in CA, but false in NY.
Several people claim that CA offers strong protections. That is true, but the protections are not nearly as strong as they are claiming.
And so on. If you, personally, care about this topic, talk to a good IP lawyer who knows the local laws for your state.
More precisely I was told that New York recognizes 3 types of employee relationships. They are hourly, contractor, and professional employee. The first two are obvious. You are aware if you have to punch in on a clock, or are a contractor. The default for software development is therefore the third.
As a professional employee there are no set place or hours for your employment. (That is why you don't get overtime.) Therefore anything that you do that could possibly relate to your employment is by default assumed to be a work for hire that took place during the course of your employment. There are admittedly some complications there. If a programmer writes a novel, that's going to not be a work for hire. If a programmer writes a program, that's likely going to be a work for hire. But there are gray areas. For instance a VB programmer by day who works a C device driver for Linux by night might have a case that their side project doesn't relate to their employment.
But just in case, virtually every New York company makes sure that employees sign contracts that clarifies any possible ambiguity..in favor of the employer. So the reality is that if you live in New York, you can't assume that you own your side project.
Incidentally this is the reason that the FSF (which is very careful on intellectual property) requires that they get copyright assignment both from contributers and from the contributers' employers. Because they don't want to get into a situation where they think they have copyright, but someone else has a legal claim to copyright that code.
He doesn't explicitly state if his open source work was entirely done on his own time and equipment or done during down time at work or such, but it might be the case in his post there.
It's strange. As you probably know, the work for hire exception to copyright comes from the 1976 Federal Copyright Act. It doesn't extend to times when you are not at work, or have a 24/7 idea for professionals. It's also the case that nearly every state has hourly, contract and salary/overtime exempt employment categories, yet no other states I know of extend work for hire to off hours in the absence of a contract. If this doctrine can indeed be found in NY State Law, it would seem to be a state regulating something that only Congress has a right to regulate, which is copyright law (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8).
It would be really interesting to see the text of the NY state law on this, maybe I'll be able to find it some time.
I am intimately familiar with that case. :-)
(Point being that it depends on where you live.)
Specific to Canada - and Alberta - would be nice. :)
I'm trying to find more info on this, and can't find any relevant info on Google...
I started writing an application 10 years before the formation of a UK Ltd company, and when I joined them I let them use it.
I ended up having to negotiate and buy said software from the liquidator when it failed because it was cheaper than fighting the claim in court to prove ownership.
As many have said, get everything in writing.
Managing a contracted worker in your field of expertise, within the creative restriction that you cannot perform their work for them, is itself a highly educational exercise for someone with entrepreneurial interests.
Be sure to document well, though.
I get what you're saying from a financial and legal perspective, but it definitely does not solve the greater problem.
And yet everywhere they are treated with suspicion.
Is the reason I just get sick of S.O. sometimse.
http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Property-Open-Source-Prot...
While this has "open source" in the title, it's still an excellent book related to this topic.
Another good thing about this book is that it draws analogies between software source code and law statutes, making it very easy for software folks to understand these legal issues.