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Google claims copyright on employee side projects

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Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#161

Post by anewguy9000 »

tytso wrote: post #95

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". The problem is it's extremely difficult to say, figure out when someone might have invented some super clever idea which can be pantented "on their own time". This was true when I worked for MIT, VA Linux, IBM, and Google. At VA Linux it was the VC's which insisted on…

are you google pr? because this post is full of misinformation. shopify, microsoft, and a myriad of other tech companies ive worked for have no such clause. google's policy in this regard is terrible. im upset about it because its a pretty basic and valuable thing to be able to participate in your own activities, code or otherwise.

disclaimer: this post reflects my own personal views and not those of my employer.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#162

Post by anaphor »

shadowgovt wrote: post #120
q3k wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you make an excellent point, in particular regarding the fact that this is a US-based policy. US copyright law is extremely friendly to individual creators at the expense of corporations. It makes corporations bend over backwards to avoid getting into a messy legal dispute with somebody that they've employed to create for them. This policy is so broad because if an individual Google employee were to try and c…

Please cite relevant statutes or case law. It's pretty easy to write a contract that only assigns copyright to the corporation for works that were created on company time. That is standard practice for pretty much every job, including non-tech ones.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#163

Post by katet »

q3k wrote: post #114
fierarul wrote: post #104

> 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.

Without diving into the ins-and-outs of this, my current contract contains a claim like this. Well outside the US, and the UK/EU - it's in South East Asia.

It says something like "on company equipment" and/or "reasonably related to skills/knowledge gained or applicable during employment with the company".

So I wouldn't quite quote this as being US imperialism. I seem to recall similar clauses in my previous contracts, but can't swear on it.

My take is the "skills/knowledge gained or applicable with the company bit": if its in my company's core market, then sure. If it's from training they paid for/provided (say - I don't know - Kotlin, if I didn't already know Kotlin) then OK.

But if I make a PHP/JS app, in my own time, in an unrelated market, then they can bite me for it. Obviously, in a more litigious environment, some people may not want to take that risk.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#164

Post by Retric »

tomtomtom777 wrote: post #51
Retric wrote: post #23

Earlier 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.

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.

There are plenty of examples where A and B is treated as a negation of A or B. “Do you want A or B? Why not both?” As one example from a popular mime. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/why-not-both-why-dont-we-have...

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#165

Post by maze-le »

lnsru wrote: post #100
maze-le wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I am building electrical measurement equipment daily and tried to sell couple peripherals for Raspberry Pi as side project. The stupid thing is, that you don’t decide what’s in direct competition. That decides a lawyer and I got rejection since both were electrical systems :-))

Sorry to hear that. That's seriously fucked up, and I am almost sure that it wouldn't stand in court

>> that you don’t decide what’s in direct competition. That decides a lawyer

No. If in doubt a court decides it, not an encroaching law department -- but nobody wants that to happen so everyone silences themselves beforehand...

Just one more reason for me never to be employed by a company with more than 150 employees

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#166

Post by FussyZeus »

anaphor wrote: post #162
shadowgovt wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you make an excellent point, in particular regarding the fact that this is a US-based policy. US copyright law is extremely friendly to individual creators at the expense of corporations. It makes corporations bend over backwards to avoid getting into a messy legal dispute with somebody that they've employed to create for them. This policy is so broad because if an individual Google employee were to try and c…

Please cite relevant statutes or case law. It's pretty easy to write a contract that only assigns copyright to the corporation for works that were created on company time. That is standard practice for pretty much every job, including non-tech ones.

Except Google is one of many corporations that exploit passion for the work their employees are doing to get hundreds of extra hours out of them off the clock.

You're right, it's very easy for them to say "only work at work" but they don't want to do that, so instead, anything created by employees is their IP.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#167

Post by repsilat »

martius wrote: post #140
tytso wrote: post #95

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". The problem is it's extremely difficult to say, figure out when someone might have invented some super clever idea which can be pantented "on their own time". This was true when I worked for MIT, VA Linux, IBM, and Google. At VA Linux it was the VC's which insisted on…

I'm a googler, I've got side projects, most of them are open-source. While I'd prefer not to think about all this and just code, I appreciate that there is an existing policy instead of a bad surprise in a few years. The current policy, which is 100% public ( https://opensource.google/docs/iarc/ ), is basically "let's assume that we own everything except what we don't, and let's figure things out before it's too late…

Also a googler.

> because you think that a good open-source license will not protect you/your work from being stolen (!).

My reason for wanting to keep copyright is that I want to be allowed to work on my code under the same name after I leave the company. I'd happily trade away that option if I were being paid to work on it, but if it's my hobby, and if (in my view, if not IARC's) it isn't related to my work or Google's business, I won't.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#168

Post by c2h5oh »

tytso wrote: post #95

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". The problem is it's extremely difficult to say, figure out when someone might have invented some super clever idea which can be pantented "on their own time". This was true when I worked for MIT, VA Linux, IBM, and Google. At VA Linux it was the VC's which insisted on…

It's common for large corporations, but I've been able to negotiate it being removed in all cases but one (it was an acquihire by large corpo and I quit over that after golden handcuffs expired).

Don't accept it as standard or it will really become it.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#169

Post by masukomi »

katet wrote: post #163
q3k wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Without diving into the ins-and-outs of this, my current contract contains a claim like this. Well outside the US, and the UK/EU - it's in South East Asia. It says something like "on company equipment" and/or "reasonably related to skills/knowledge gained or applicable during employment with the company". So I wouldn't quite quote this as being US imperialism. I seem to recall similar clauses in my previous contracts…

the problem with that is that you "gain skill" in their programming language when you work there. And you "gain skill" as a programmer...

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#170

Post by mcv »

marcosdumay wrote: post #125
fierarul wrote: post #104

> 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?)

It doesn't make a lot of sense to sign a contract you know to be illegal, though. Better get it out before you sign it. And it being illegal is a very good argument for getting it out. If the company has a problem with that, you know the company intends to make a problem out of it in the future.
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