Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 327 posts

Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#261

Post by irvingprime »

runninganyways wrote: post #183
irvingprime wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Learning the ins and outs of the law and of IP negotiations - a very specialized and cut-throat field - in a few days or maybe weeks is out of the question. If he can't talk to a lawyer, he's going to lose. Period. Maybe very badly. After having already screwed up, now is not the time to half-ass it. You're not a terrible person but you've given absolutely terrible advice.

At what point did I tell OP to become an expert on IP law? Nowhere. My advice to OP was to educate himself so that no matter what he did he could be more effective. > You're not a terrible person but you've given absolutely terrible advice You didn't read my advice correctly and I place zero value in your opinion about me being a good person or not especially considering you thought you had enough information to even…

Now you're nitpicking. Sure, he can educate himself and should. But in the amount of time he has (can't be much) he can learn basically nothing. It's too late for that path to make any sense.

As for the other thing, looks like you're intentionally picking a fight. Therefore, out of deference to your better logic, I withdraw my comment that you are not a bad person.

Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#263

Post by clucas »

goatherders wrote: post #253
clucas wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that the employer/employee relationship is so carefully controlled (specifically to limit the power the employer wields over the employee outside employment) is what makes me suspect that at least some jurisdictions would decline to enforce an employment contract provision that gave the employer ownership over all IP the employee produces, even if the IP is produced off-hours, without use of the employer's e…

At issue is he says that what he created is within the realm/market of his employer. That would be akin to an Intel engineer saying "I designed another microchip for computers but I promise I was doing this for me and not for Intel so its mine." You cant do some work on specific sector A for your employer and then do some other work in specific sector A on your own and now expect the employer to ask, justifiably, "wh…

My apologies, I was responding to the question about why a court would find an employment contract provision unenforceable - we don't know what the OP's employment contract states (or if he even has one), so I was treating this whole line of inquiry as separate from the OP's situation. Didn't mean to confuse the issues.

Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#264

Post by yowlingcat »

tyingq wrote: post #254
yowlingcat wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. OP needs to get a lawyer. There's no harm in letting them know they've retained one -- most savvy employees have. On the other hand, the risk vector here is from the employee already making the cardinal mistake of working on something during off hours that directly competes with employer's line of business. That's where the battle is likely already lost, unless they live in a state like CA where noncompetes…

"Nonsense" Pretty aggressive opener. Is that really necessary? "There's no harm in letting them know they've retained one" It will, for sure, trigger an internal discussion, and maybe some defensive moves like trolling logs or making a copy of his work PC drive. For example, what do you suppose the chances are that the OP navigated to his GitHub repo from a work PC? How is advising caution in this situation "nonsense…

The only thing that's aggressive about that as an opener is if someone specifically takes offense at the suggestion of legal counsel as something you should always have if you can afford it. That's absurd. It is absolutely poor judgment to enter employment without it. If you don't have legal counsel and end up in this situation:

1) You should have had counsel earlier when you signed your agreement. You could have gone through your contract before you signed it, and potentially have gotten revisions. If you didn't get revisions, you could at least correctly understand the boundaries of legal restrictions you're agreeing to.

2) You definitely need counsel now. The situation is going to force you to make a high stakes decision.

Even if you can't change the situation, you can at least learn from it.

Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#265

Post by rayascott »

Looking at the Apache 2 license, it seems like they want to take ownership of your trademark and monetise it. Otherwise they would simply fork it and get on with making their changes. I would point them to the license and ask them what issues they have with it. Expecting you to simply give them control over your copyrighted work is outrageous, especially if you didn’t do it on company time. It’s probably best to get a lawyer to look at your employment contract if it’s unclear how far they think their control and ownership extend.

Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#266

Post by smt88 »

rodw wrote: post #244
ryandrake wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things all depend on the country and state/province in which you are employed. Whenever this topic comes up on HN, all these armchair lawyers come out of the woodwork and start making blanket statements about what they are "pretty sure" is allowed, but this issue is dependent on what's in your contract, and what your national and/or local laws allow companies to claim. "Talk to a lawyer" is the best answer to s…

> "Talk to a lawyer" is the best answer to something like this Agreed. That's probably the best advice for any non-trivial legal issue or question. I hope no one read my answer as contradicting that. That said, is there _any_ example, in _any_ jurisdiction where a court has upheld an employer's right to IP that meets those three criteria (employee's own time, own equipment and unrelated to the employers business)? I…

> court has upheld an employer's right to IP that meets those three criteria (employee's own time, own equipment and unrelated to the employers business)

Yes. There are places where either by statute or by the employment contract, anything the employee creates belongs to the employer. The underlying concept is that the employer created an environment where the employee was able to learn and be inspired.

I know personally of a situation where a university exercised this right, although I don't know if they did it through statutes, common law, or an explicit agreement.

Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#267

Post by Silhouette »

rodw wrote: post #244
ryandrake wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things all depend on the country and state/province in which you are employed. Whenever this topic comes up on HN, all these armchair lawyers come out of the woodwork and start making blanket statements about what they are "pretty sure" is allowed, but this issue is dependent on what's in your contract, and what your national and/or local laws allow companies to claim. "Talk to a lawyer" is the best answer to s…

> "Talk to a lawyer" is the best answer to something like this Agreed. That's probably the best advice for any non-trivial legal issue or question. I hope no one read my answer as contradicting that. That said, is there _any_ example, in _any_ jurisdiction where a court has upheld an employer's right to IP that meets those three criteria (employee's own time, own equipment and unrelated to the employers business)? I…

In one discussion, I think with my own lawyer when reviewing a proposed employment contract, I was advised that it is best to be quite specific about what is covered with these IP clauses precisely because how enforceable they are can ultimately come down to the unpredictable opinion of a court where the people making the decision might not be technical experts.

It was a long time ago, so I may be slightly misremembering the exact details, but in a nutshell the example given was someone who did have to hand something over because a court decided that being a salaried programmer using a certain programming language at work meant something they programmed in that same language at home was related to their employment. The software itself was in a totally different field to what they did for work, so their assumption had been that it wouldn't be covered, but the court didn't see it that way. I'm in England and was talking to an English lawyer about English employment, so I assume that was also the location of the case mentioned, but I'm afraid I don't know anything more specific to provide a proper citation.

I was also warned that this is a bigger problem for employees of huge companies with many divisions, because in that case the employer could have interests in a wide variety of different fields that would be relevant for contractual purposes. Even though any given employee might have no knowledge that something they're doing out-of-hours could be affected, because it's nothing to do with what they do themselves and what happens in their own part of the business, it can still be relevant from the employer's point of view and so trigger the contractual transfer of IP rights.

Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#269

Post by samatman »

yolo42 wrote: post #49
relaunched wrote: post #23

Find a lawyer, ASAP, that specializes in employment and / or IP. This is a legal issue and you need to solve it with people that know the law. Talking, signing, admitting things, etc, only hurt you. Depending on your country and state, as well as your employment agreement, there are a lot of impactful variables. Intuition and personal relationships are not going to help you solve this issue, especially, absent knowin…

Thank you for the comment! I totally get what you and other threads are trying to say and I don't disagree with what you are saying. I probably should have cleared this out in my original post (my bad) that I do not wish to pursue the legal route. I personally feel that in my case, it will just drain everyone's energy for not much gain at the end. Also, personal relationships matter to me as well. I'm trying to find…

Unless your employer is foolish (unlikely) they have definitely talked to a lawyer about this already.

You should do so as well, to be on the same footing. This lets you negotiate with confidence, you'll understand your BATNA and the terms of your contract with the business.

Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#270

Post by rodw »

smt88 wrote: post #266
rodw wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Talk to a lawyer" is the best answer to something like this Agreed. That's probably the best advice for any non-trivial legal issue or question. I hope no one read my answer as contradicting that. That said, is there _any_ example, in _any_ jurisdiction where a court has upheld an employer's right to IP that meets those three criteria (employee's own time, own equipment and unrelated to the employers business)? I…

> court has upheld an employer's right to IP that meets those three criteria (employee's own time, own equipment and unrelated to the employers business) Yes. There are places where either by statute or by the employment contract, anything the employee creates belongs to the employer. The underlying concept is that the employer created an environment where the employee was able to learn and be inspired. I know person…

If you (or anyone reading this) can link to any examples of or details about this sort of thing I'd be interested in seeing it.

Don't get me wrong - I believe you - I'm just curious about it and would like to learn more.

Post reply on HN