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Google claims copyright on employee side projects

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Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#191

Post by supercanuck »

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 did not use to be standard industry practice.

Now even every bodyshop and IT Contracting outfit has language in their agreements that claim ownership.

It is a claim that they own the information contained in one’s brain

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#192

Post by feanaro »

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…

As others have said, this is nowhere near the standard outside of the US. Personally, I consider this "industry standard" pretty gross and touching on some very uncomfortable topics like wage slavery. Your employer should not own your ideas and it should not matter where you got them.

A no-compete clause is the much more reasonable solution a company can use to protect itself from flagrant violations of trust.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#193

Post by BLanen »

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 standard industry practice for companies to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up with

Well, because it's standard industry practice, I guess you're not allowed to complain about it.

Your whole argument is that it's the norm, while this article advocates for changing the norm.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#194

Post by marcan_42 »

teddyh wrote: post #59
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.

This, pretty much. I do have a blog, but 1) it's mildly more annoying to update, 2) I have >30K Twitter followers, I assume maybe 5 people have my RSS feed in a reader somewhere, and 3) I didn't actually expect it to turn out this long, but I was already typing things up into the Twitter boxes, so shrug, and 4) Twitter seems to be the place for this sort of discussion these days; my blog doesn't even have comments.

I'll use my blog for long technical posts though. Those make more sense there.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#196

Post by anaphor »

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…

Their argument seems to be that "California law allows us to do it", and "it's protecting us from employees creating competing products".

The problem I see with that is

1) They don't have to do everything they're legally allowed to in a contract as long as they aren't breaking the law.

2) It's disingenuous to spin this as somehow protecting employees. They just want people to make use of their process so that they get to arbitrarily decide whether they own something or not. If employees were really interested in exercising their legal rights, they could ignore the IARC and work on it on their own time anyway, and if Google wanted to, they could try suing the employee to get the copyright transferred. In practice, that makes them look bad, so they have the IARC process instead, which makes it easier for them to pressure employees into assigning things to Google, even if it wouldn't stand up in court.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#197

Post by Xylakant »

q3k wrote: post #137
Xylakant wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has an entire law around this which came into force 1957: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/arbnerfg/__49.html Many work contracts don't have clauses for inventions related to your field of employment because there's no ambiguity. Most patches would not fall under the law, but entire libaries or novel approaches might. (basically anything patent-worthy)

IIUC this governs patentable inventions, not copyright.

No, it also covers technical improvements that are not patentable: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/arbnerfg/__3.html

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#198

Post by Yizahi »

carom wrote: post #151
Yizahi wrote: post #116

"usbmuxd was rejected without an explanation. My follow-up email asking for clarification was ignored." Isn't it funny that Google employees themselves at least sometimes can taste how other Google "products" feel when their accounts are banned, deleted and there is zero ways to appeal such decisions?

I think most Google employees are aware of that problem and wish there was a better support structure in place. They aren't paid 300k per year to deal with some random account request though, they are paid to write systems that deal with one billion accounts, so there is not much opportunity there. Until the tech giants hire massive support workforces, this isn't something engineers can do anything about.

Well someone did wrote all those automated banhammer scripts, right? I don't think DMCA requires automated ban system, Google invented it voluntarily.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#200

Post by geofft »

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 standard industry practice for companies to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up with, even "on their own time"

No, it's standard industry practice to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up to that relates to the company's business. It's certainly not standard practice to claim ownership of, like, a young-adult fiction novel you write on weekends.

The unusual thing here is that Google's business and potential business is approximately everything to do with computers.

> Also unique to Google is there is a process by which you can get permission for you to out-and-out own the work done on your own time, as opposed to Google owning it and releasing it under an open source license. If you take that option then it really has to be done on your own time, and must not use any company resources, meaning not on a company laptop, or on a company network, etc. This is rare, and I'm not aware of many other companies that give employees that option.

I think this is perfectly normal. I've never worked somewhere where it isn't true. (Also, isn't this basically required for the common Silicon Valley practice of "working on your side hustle while employed at your FAANG, and then getting investors later" to not be fraught with IP dangers?)

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