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Google claims copyright on employee side projects

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Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#51

Post by tomtomtom777 »

Retric wrote: post #23
YawningAngel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think that if someone asked me to bring "wine or beer" to a party, literally everyone I know would be fine with me bringing a bit of both. In fact, what would be weird would be someone objecting to my bringing both on the grounds that they meant, but didn't say, "xor". I don't think this contract is ambiguous in natural language. Or is generally inclusive, and if you want xor you either write xor or use some c…

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.

That or is not really a XOR becomes clear when you negate it. I don't want subs or pizza. I am not going to vote for A or B.

I would say OR is the natural use, and exclusion is implied by the context in these examples.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#52

Post by nullc »

Eikon wrote: post #15
petjuh wrote: post #5

Were those side projects done during work hours or using Google's equipment?

It's crazy that the "using X company equipment" legal basis works at all in those disputes. Most of the time, "equipment" seems to mean "laptop". IHMO when "equipment" is such a commodity as a laptop, this should never even be an issue. That's like a newspaper that would claims the work of one of it's journalist who is writing books on his personal time on the basis that the book was written with a pencil he brought…

This is most easily resolved by simply not using a company laptop at any time.

One of the first pieces of advice I got when I joined a big tech company for the first time was to just put the work provided laptop back in it's original box and get my own.

This turns out to be pretty good from a number of angles-- you get an emergency spare plus any kind of crazy bloat ware your job needs you already have a sacrificial host to load it on.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#55

Post by workthrowaway »

draugadrotten wrote: post #11

Does 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.

yep, it's accepted in other fields. the craziest for me has to be the music/sound industry. you could spend months coming up with the right chords just to have some big label or famous person you don't have any relationship with come after you.

this is recent but in design, i read that companies can now own branding colors and themes.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#57

Post by paulcole »

draugadrotten wrote: post #11

Does 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.

After reading this, a fun exercise is to imagine you’ve stumbled onto RN, Restaurant News, and found a comment saying,

> Does society accept this behavior outside of the restaurant world? Imagine Google claiming copyright on a website made during an employee’s spare time.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#58

Post by S_A_P »

rs23296008n1 wrote: post #36
S_A_P wrote: post #33

I 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?

Dont repeat yourself. IF you have code that solves a problem, dont rewrite it at every gig...

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#59

Post by teddyh »

vesche wrote: post #56

Are we really at the point where we're using 100 tweets to write what should be in a blog post?

To have impact, ideas need to spread. Since most people don’t blog anymore, they can’t reblog other people’s blog posts. But they can retweet other people’s tweets.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#60

Post by Eikon »

nullc wrote: post #52
Eikon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy that the "using X company equipment" legal basis works at all in those disputes. Most of the time, "equipment" seems to mean "laptop". IHMO when "equipment" is such a commodity as a laptop, this should never even be an issue. That's like a newspaper that would claims the work of one of it's journalist who is writing books on his personal time on the basis that the book was written with a pencil he brought…

This is most easily resolved by simply not using a company laptop at any time. One of the first pieces of advice I got when I joined a big tech company for the first time was to just put the work provided laptop back in it's original box and get my own. This turns out to be pretty good from a number of angles-- you get an emergency spare plus any kind of crazy bloat ware your job needs you already have a sacrificial…

And then you get fired for spreading sensitive company information on non-authorized devices.
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