Google claims copyright on employee side projects • Hacker News Board

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#71

Post by nullc » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 1:05 PM UTC

At my prior company we explicitly disclaimed copyright interest in employee contributions to a long list of standard open source software which included by reference the entire OIN Linux system definition, specifically to avoid any complication related to employees contributing patches back to the open source tools they used in the course of their work (and accordingly this covered not just work done on their own time, but also contributions made the course of their work). Employees were also invited to nominate additional pieces of software fairly liberally, particularly free software that didn't overlap with the organization's central business.

While promoting permissive approaches like this with other organizations I've encountered employers which seem to have a some confusion about the purposes of different parts of their agreement. E.g. an IP agreement is essentially unrelated to making sure an employee is doing their job-- so a "I don't want them spending a lot of time on that" isn't a valid reason to impinge their rights, after all they would be perfectly able to slack off by staring blankly at the coffee pot regardless of what your IP agreement says.

An IP agreement should be about having a clear boundary on company property, it's not a replacement for effective management. Unless you're an operating system company (which to some extent google is, but very few of the innumerable companies that copy google's practices are), trivial fixes to widely used open source software are not good candidates for company property and are not at all candidates for it if developed on the employee's own time.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#72

Post by microcolonel » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 1:06 PM UTC

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #65

I personally think this is just another step in a series of many reminding us that Google has become just another US corporation. And a way those grow is by finding 'efficiencies','doing more with less' and leveraging their size. It is an end of an era. Then again, Jimmy Johns was always pretty bad for the workers and attempted to have kids working there signing non-competes. Maybe we should be happy it took google s…

> Google has become just another US corporation

There are many other U.S. corporations who manage to do business without betraying their employees like this.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#73

Post by maze-le » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 1:06 PM UTC

lnsru wrote: post #61

oweiler wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany this isn't even a thing.

Have you tried it? One still has “Anzeigepflicht des Arbeitnehmers” (duty to report). And then your boss has a right to forbid your activity. It is a very thing in Germany.

Have you? This is only relevant if your invention is in direct competition to the business at hand.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#74

Post by nordsieck » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 1:07 PM UTC

martin-adams wrote: post #38

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.

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 woul…

> Intellectual Property and Copyright aren't quite the same thing. The IP is the idea, whereas the copyright is the specific recipe.

No. Intellectual property is property.

One cannot "own" an idea, but one can own a copyright; copyright (along with trademark and patent) is a form of IP.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#75

Post by jsolson » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 1:08 PM UTC

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #65

I personally think this is just another step in a series of many reminding us that Google has become just another US corporation. And a way those grow is by finding 'efficiencies','doing more with less' and leveraging their size. It is an end of an era. Then again, Jimmy Johns was always pretty bad for the workers and attempted to have kids working there signing non-competes. Maybe we should be happy it took google s…

> Maybe we should be happy it took google so long.

If you read the thread you'll note that this policy has been around for a long time (at least the ~7 years I've been with Google). The author also notes that, in terms of open source, things have become dramatically _more_ permissive over time.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#76

Post by microcolonel » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 1:09 PM UTC

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.

Food is ineligible for copyright, in any event.

This is the default for employed persons in Canada, to some extent: anything you publish could be considered the property of your employer.

In the U.S. I believe this is typically done by agreement, and most companies include it in employment contracts, that I've seen.

The special thing here is how long Google has waited before springing this behaviour on their employees, Google seems to be scheduling all the betrayal into one year, maybe so they don't have to address all of it properly.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#77

Post by keiferski » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 1:09 PM UTC

pinkfoot wrote: post #66

akuji1993 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is mostly a US thing. If I don't implement a DIRECT competitor to my company in my free time, the company can do absolutely nothing about it here. IF I implement a competitor and put it on the market, they can fire me. They can't however, sue me for the posession of the software. That's just a legal nightmare in the US.

Where is 'here'? Curious

Post history indicates Germany.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#78

Post by ghaff » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 1:09 PM UTC

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…

The context of equipment here is (or should be) "all the expensive equipment in the lab that the employee couldn't possibly outfit themselves with." As you say, a generic laptop is awful close to being a pen and paper these days.

That said, if this sort of thing is a potential issue for you, you're probably better off using a purely personal laptop or desktop that isn't used for work purposes at all.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#79

Post by nullc » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 1:10 PM UTC

romanows wrote: post #67

nullc wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're just doing work on your personal laptop? That doesn't mean you own the work you produce so I think it would complicate ownership of the non-work you produce. Best to use the work laptop for work and the personal laptop for personal stuff both for IP and company policy reasons.

> That doesn't mean you own the work you produce

Of course not, it does however eliminate a host of problems resulting from using company equipment including additional complications from efforts you would otherwise own except for using company equipment, or the extraordinarly reduced right to privacy you have on company equipment.

Using separate equipment is also good, but isn't always realistic particularly if your work requires frequent travel.

Obviously this only works out if your employer is okay with you using your own system for work. Years ago almost all were, and I believe today outside of few industries it's still commonly fine.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#80

Post by strenholme » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 1:11 PM UTC

It is my understanding that there has never been a case in California where a court has said “OK, your employer owns that open source patch you made at 3am on your own laptop”. Poking around, Applied Materials, Inc. v. Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment comes to mind; here is a summary:

https://www.arnoldporter.com/en/perspectives/publications/20...

The only public case I know of where a company has been able to claim the open source software someone made in their own time is the Nginx case which is ongoing right now in Russia. [1] I remember a story about someone in the US (not in California) where they were asked by their employer to stop working on open source Perl code in their own spare time, but there was, as I recall, no litigation there.

As for myself, I am very careful to make it clear, when signing an “inventions” clause, that I will work on MaraDNS in my own personal time while employed. I also go to a lot of effort to date stamp my open source code, and to only use versions of my open source code written before I signed the “inventions” clause for anything work related. Actually, I prefer working as an independent contractor for employers who do not burden me with an “inventions” clause.

[1] The details are different: As I understand it, Igor Sysoev was given permission from his employer to work on nginx while at the job, and the legal stuff didn’t come up for well over a decade after Sysoev left Rambler, and, of course, it’s in Russia, so it’s somewhat different than the “3am commit on one’s own laptop in California” issue.