Google really is Hooli...
Google claims copyright on employee side projects
141–150 of 399 posts
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#142> Oh, please. It's standard industry practice for companies to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up with, even "on their own time". In the US. Problem is the US is infecting the rest of the world too, especially through subsidiaries which basically just translate from English the 'standard' employment contract. I had to refuse employment in Romania since the clauses were so broad and basically i…
> I had to refuse employment in Romania since the clauses were so broad and basically illegal under Romanian law. If it's illegal, it's void, isn't it? (Maybe Romania does it differently?)
But it's still against my principles to sign a contract that has clauses I know to be illegal, and that I would never agree with if they weren't.
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#143> Oh, please. It's standard industry practice for companies to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up with, even "on their own time". In the US. Problem is the US is infecting the rest of the world too, especially through subsidiaries which basically just translate from English the 'standard' employment contract. I had to refuse employment in Romania since the clauses were so broad and basically i…
Can confirm from my experience (~10 years in the industry). I've never even heard of this practice until I applied to Google. None of the EU companies I've worked at before had anything like this. None of the EU companies I've worked at since had anything like this. It's US imperialism, nothing less.
You haven't heard about this because it's illegal in many (most?) places outside US.
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#144> Oh, please. It's standard industry practice for companies to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up with, even "on their own time". In the US. Problem is the US is infecting the rest of the world too, especially through subsidiaries which basically just translate from English the 'standard' employment contract. I had to refuse employment in Romania since the clauses were so broad and basically i…
Can confirm from my experience (~10 years in the industry). I've never even heard of this practice until I applied to Google. None of the EU companies I've worked at before had anything like this. None of the EU companies I've worked at since had anything like this. It's US imperialism, nothing less.
If I remember correctly, I had similar or worse in my employment contracts in France.
Worse being "your skills are to be used exclusively for the benefit of Employer". That means that you can't do freelance work, or open source contributions. In theory, you're not even permitted to fix your parents printer.
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#145So what's the solution / workaround?
I think it's best to be honest with your employer, but if they're gonna claim stake at everything you write - well it sounds like a policy that eventually drives enterprising employees to game the system.
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#146It 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 cl…
If that is the case then why is this a law? Why isn't the law more clear to reflect reality? I don't really want a gun pointed at me, regardless of whether I'm about to get shot. The threat and power structure is still there.
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#147I 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.
That's exactly it, isn't it? Thanks to such restrictive contracts, you need Google's permission.
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#148Does 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 an umbrella term for some very different concepts -- copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets (maybe I'm forgetting some).
You can't copyright an idea, but you might be able to patent it. It's only intellectual property if you do.
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#149Speaking of which, is "20% time" still a thing at Google?
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If the employer owns your brain 24h/day maybe the hourly rate your are getting is not such a great deal. If you're a software engineer for Google, it's a pretty good hourly rate.
Not if they claim ownership on your side projects.
Google pay their engineer outrageous salary.