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Nothing is stopping NYC startups & employees from drafting an appropriate contract to make ownership of side-project work belong to the employee.
Why would any employer agree to that?
Nothing is stopping NYC startups & employees from drafting an appropriate contract to make ownership of side-project work belong to the employee.
Why would any employer agree to that?
Nothing is stopping NYC startups & employees from drafting an appropriate contract to make ownership of side-project work belong to the employee.
I'm reminded of Joel (Spolsky's) excellent commentary on this matter. http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/19422/if-im-working-... tl;dr from the post: "So... to answer your question. There is unlikely to be substantial difference between the contracts that you sign at various companies in the US working as a programmer or in the law that applies."
What I think the OP is pointing out is that in NY a company is able to set up a more restrictive contract than a company. At the very least (and from personal experience), companies in NY can introduce more gray areas in the contract (making it more difficult for entrepreneurs to feel safe in working on weekend projects) while still making it seem as if they follow the spirit of the CA labor code.
Nothing is stopping NYC startups & employees from drafting an appropriate contract to make ownership of side-project work belong to the employee.
I think the OP's point is not that startups need this, but that people working 9-5 in a cubical farm in CA have a chance at starting a side business and eventually growing it into a startup, whereas in NY they have less protection for that sort of work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would any employer agree to that?
Many employers operating outside of California have a policy very similar to the California law. There are some companies with even more generous policies, though I'm not familiar with any major tech companies with a more generous policy.
Nothing is stopping NYC startups & employees from drafting an appropriate contract to make ownership of side-project work belong to the employee.
Add to this that the side project problem isn't relevant for many people, and people can't predict 5-10 years out whether it will be relevant to them. How many 22-year-olds expect to write a $20,000/month iPhone app, some time in the future, and aren't already trying to do it? Also, if you do a side project on your own equipment and time, most of the time you can hide the fact that much of the work occurred while under a surrender-all; if nothing else, just rewrite the code outright after you leave, since the code will be better and take much less time to write on a second write. This means, from a practical standpoint, that most people don't worry about this situation until/unless they end up in the 0.1% it actually affects and it's too late. This law is only relevant to extreme edge cases; for the rest, it merely makes a statement about the meaning of employment, and in the New York case, it makes a disgusting one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're misreading the law. As an example, if you work for a software company that makes iPhone games, and you write an iPhone game in your spare time and with your own resources, that game could be at risk of being owned by your employer. If, however, instead of making an iPhone game you make a photo sharing website, there's very little risk that your work could be owned by your employer. There are obviously lots of…
As you pointed out, it's a gray area. http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/19422/if-im-working-... " Not related to your employer's line of work. Um, wait. What's the definition of related? If my employer is Microsoft, they do everything. They made a goddamn BARNEY PLUSH TOY with a computer in it once. Are plush toys related? Obviously operating systems, compilers, desktop applications, search engines, and games a…
I don't think it's this devious. It's simpler than that. Strategically and legally speaking, you never don't want rights, even if those are rights you shouldn't, by any reasonable moral judgment, have. Companies ask for aggressive terms not to be malevolent and devious but because the lawyer's job is to get the most aggressive terms (i.e. the most rights) possible. If it were legal for a company to assert rights over an employee's work for 2 years after employment, shareholders would expect executives, and executives would therefore expect lawyers, to push for those terms. The game, at least in theory, is about getting the most aggressive (and yes, often unfair) terms upfront and letting the courts sort it out.