The tweeter admits that Google's policy has changed since then.
"I guess they've realized this was a dumb policy, because under the current rules what I did was totally fine."
Google claims copyright on employee side projects
31–40 of 399 posts
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#32[deleted]
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#33I do software consulting sleeved through various contracting or consulting companies. All of the paperwork I have to sign tries to have a claim to any IP created at the job. I immediately red line this unless there is some sort of reasonableness to it. I don’t mind giving some percentage of IP to a company that kept me busy somewhere for a year and the Resultant IP isn’t the main focus of the engagement. They are right that it probably wouldn’t have happened if they had not given me the opportunity. Otherwise I am not going to relinquish the right rights to code written to solve a problem. Most clauses I’ve seen are in this vein. Nope. DRY.
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
XOR is the natural use of or in English. Do you want to get subs or pizza? Are you going to vote for A or B? Logical OR is often written as ‘and or’. Do you want to see a movie and or get dinner? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/And/or That said it’s not a universal standard and like most of English has wide regional differences.
I think whether "or" means inclusive or or xor is in fact ambiguous and determined by context in English. I think if you as a megacorp write ambiguous contracts and try to enforce them against your employees, you do not deserve a sympathetic interpretation from the courts.
In fact such interpretations of contract ambiguities (in favor of weaker party) are even codified in some countries, most notably the whole of EU [1]
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#35Does society accept this behaviour outside tech? Imagine that a Michelin restaurant would claim copyright on the dishes cooked by the chef in his spare time. Or that the big farm would ask for a piece of those carrots grown in the back yard.
Lots of people are employed with an understanding that they won't compete with the employer. Google's stance is on the aggressive end of things, but that's where the California law is coming from.
The problem with an aggressive stance is that the response is then likely combative as well.
Google isn't alone in this. Plenty of other companies have the same clauses. They already know these clauses have consequences but they are trying to address real fears / visible threats of their own.
All that said, I'm fairly sure unionisation and other reactive responses such as further government red tape wont bother them at all.
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#36I do software consulting sleeved through various contracting or consulting companies. All of the paperwork I have to sign tries to have a claim to any IP created at the job. I immediately red line this unless there is some sort of reasonableness to it. I don’t mind giving some percentage of IP to a company that kept me busy somewhere for a year and the Resultant IP isn’t the main focus of the engagement. They are rig…
DRY?
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#37This isn't surprising, though it does suck that employees have to jump through these hoops to avoid having our work claimed by employers. The way to go is to never use company resources or company time when working on personal things and also never work on something that they'd want. Sometimes it's convenient to break the first 2 rules so it's annoying to make sure to never use my work laptop/internet/office when wor…
> Sometimes it's convenient to break the first 2 rules so it's annoying to make sure to never use my work laptop/internet/office when working on personal stuff, but it's doable.
For me, remote work makes this very easy. My office is a bedroom in my apartment. My internet plan. I have a work laptop, strictly for work stuff, and my own laptop right next to it. I don't work on my own projects on company time, but I might on a lunch break (when I'm clocked out).
(I occasionally use my own laptop to help with work stuff though -- having an extra device with an ethernet port comes in handy for tcpdumping stuff without having to try isolate the traffic I want from everything else going through the work laptop)
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#38Does society accept this behaviour outside tech? Imagine that a Michelin restaurant would claim copyright on the dishes cooked by the chef in his spare time. Or that the big farm would ask for a piece of those carrots grown in the back yard.
Intellectual Property and Copyright aren't quite the same thing. The IP is the idea, whereas the copyright is the specific recipe.
So in my mind, the equivalent would be using your learned cooking skills for another restaurant while working at a Michelin restaurant. They both serve food (competing or related industry), but while the dishes are different, the techniques to create them come from the same source.
I wouldn't expect a Michelin restaurant to stop someone cooking in their spare time, just that they can't copy their exact dishes in part or full and compete with them.
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#39Does society accept this behaviour outside tech? Imagine that a Michelin restaurant would claim copyright on the dishes cooked by the chef in his spare time. Or that the big farm would ask for a piece of those carrots grown in the back yard.
There are a lot of things different in the "real" world and the "software" world. Nobody would accept underwear with a build in camera, gps tracker and a microphone wo give the data to x companys. But with a cellphone (almost) everybody is ok. Also if something goes wrong with software, it's the customers problem. The customer accepted the contract with no rights for him (software AS IS, no warranty), nobody would ac…
> The customer accepted the contract with no rights for him (software AS IS, no warranty)
That's only specific to FOSS.
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#40Does society accept this behaviour outside tech? Imagine that a Michelin restaurant would claim copyright on the dishes cooked by the chef in his spare time. Or that the big farm would ask for a piece of those carrots grown in the back yard.
"Imagine that a Michelin restaurant would claim copyright on the dishes cooked by the chef in his spare time."
Not a Michelin restaurant, but apparently Outback Steakhouse makes that exact claim.
"Inventions, Ideas, Processes, and Designs. All inventions, ideas, recipes, processes, programs, software, and designs ...conceived or made by Employee during the course of Employee’s employment with the Employer (whether or not actually conceived during regular business hours) and for a period..."
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/874691/0001193125081...