Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs • Hacker News Board

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#141

Post by btrettel » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 3:23 PM UTC

Amusing previous HN comment on this sort of problem (not from me):

> I've always thought that if a company claims rights over what you do outside worktime, they should do it not only for your genial ideas, but for the bad ones too. So, if you incur in a stupid debt it must belong to the company. Your newborn baby? The company mus pay alimony. It's all or nothing!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1113065

Edit: I found a Slashdot comment that makes the same point:

> When the company has a blanket policy that takes the employee's inventions, it can come to bite them in the ass.

> When I was illegally fired by Microsystems, Inc. ("MSI") they took possession of work I did on my own time using my own tools. However, on the workers comp. claim their denial was based on the claim the tendinitis was caused in part by my work at home. Either MSI fraudulently denied the workers comp. claim, or committed fraud by asserting and taking possession of the work I did on my own time.

> By having a blanket policy of owning everything you do, the employer could be on the hook for everything you do.

http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2667463&cid=39013649

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#142

Post by ptx » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 3:26 PM UTC

StrLght wrote: post #104

_odey wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be willing to copy paste (redacted if needed) exactly what the "Intellectual Property Rights" section of your contract states right now? I would like to have it on hand to use as a "this is what others have and I want the same", concrete example.

Not OP, but here's the exact words from the contract: >You will give the Company full written details of all Inventions and of all works embodying Intellectual Property Rights made wholly or partially by You at any time during the course of Your Employment (whether or not during working hours or using Company premises or resources) which relate to, or are reasonably capable of being used in, the business of the Compa…

> You will give the Company full written details of all ... works ... made wholly or partially by You at any time ... whether or not during working hours ... which relate to, or are reasonably capable of being used in, the business of the Company [...] all Intellectual Property Rights subsisting ... in all such Inventions and works will ... vest in the Company absolutely.

Was this intended as an example of a desirable version or an undesirable version of such a clause? I thought the poster you're replying to asked for a suggestion for something you might actually want to put in your contract, but your example seems to give the company exclusive rights to everything (unless it's not "capable of being used" by the company, but surely they could find some use for any piece of software if they want to).

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#143

Post by some-more-info » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 3:26 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #139

marcinzm wrote: post #78

A note to Bumble, this makes me not want to work for you or anyone who is currently in a related leadership position at Bumble (ie: eng leadership, etc.). Given the lack of supply in engineering the bad publicity is going to cost you more than any miniscule gain. edit: And I don't even publish OSS anymore but if you're willing to go after an employee for something this petty what else would you go after them for.

> but if you're willing to go after an employee for something this petty After reading more closely, it appears both repos are derivative works of pojects that Bumble (aka Badoo) owns. It says so in the README.md. They were also written while the author was employed by Badoo/Bumble. I don't think this is as clear-cut in favor of the developer as the comments would suggest.

This is correct, MVIKotlin is based on Badoo's MVICore, and Decompose is a mix of Badoo's RIBs (and zsoltk's Compose-Router which is also transitively a Badoo-owned codebase).

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#144

Post by activitypea » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 3:27 PM UTC

The two repos being contested are:

1) MVIKotlin - "Extendable MVI framework [...] inspired by Badoo MVICore library"

2) Decompose - "Kotlin BLoCs [...] inspired by Badoos RIBs fork of the Uber RIBs framework"

I hate corporations more than most people here, but this might be as black and white as the title and comment section imply

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#145

Post by FpUser » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

_odey wrote: post #79

FpUser wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I got my first programming job in Canada I've already had active product. I have informed them about it and I've also asked them to agree that whatever I am working on in my private time is my property as long as it is not in direct competition and / or not based on employer's code. They did not mind at all.

Was that agreement in writing, and signed? Could you share such a document, redacted if needed, with us?

It was in writing and signed. No sharing as it was 90s and I've no idea where the copy is if still exists. Never needed that again as I went on my own in 2000 and have never looked back. But it was not lawyer speak. I just concocted a couple of paragraphs myself that had replaced their standard "ownership of whatever I do" and that was it. It was a small company and they were easy.

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#146

Post by KronisLV » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

ealexhudson wrote: post #55

_odey wrote: post #39

I've asked this before and never got a straight answer, but I'll ask again: what exact clauses do I need to modify in the employment contract, and what exactly must they say, in order to avoid this sort of situation? (relevant to UK employment that is). If you've solved this for yourself, please tell us all how and what it's written in yours so we can do the same. Here is a link to what my previous employment contrac…

Copyright is automatically the employer's in the UK: the term is "in the course of employment", and no contractual language is required. The employer is effectively the author. What that term means is a matter of case law, and is different if you are contracted / self-employed. Typically it is interpreted in a pro-employer manner, and if you are employed to write code then then assume that all the code you write is y…

> Typically it is interpreted in a pro-employer manner, and if you are employed to write code then then assume that all the code you write is your employer's.

Hmm, this makes me feel that having one's own company in addition to any other employment and writing off time spent working on open source for it could be a way around this. Of course, then you get into the whole non-compete mess...

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#147

Post by mistrial9 » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

miohtama wrote: post #103

tomxor wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar situation with my current job, but with a happy ending. The contract was "standard" but others who also read it thoroughly had the same issue with broad, overreaching clauses that essentially attempt to claim complete IP ownership of everything the employee ever touched. The directors were very reasonable and understood my concerns, we eventually managed to remove or reword all of the offending parts.…

Lawyers are negotiators and their job is to maximize the company profit and security. If one signs such an overraching contract it is their stupidity. It is not fair, but in a negotiation you are not supposed to be fair.

> in a negotiation you are not supposed to be fair.

Civilization and its ways.. they come and go, I hear

I once did a consulting gig for a C-suite of a very, very large company, personally. Uncharacteristically I was a tiny bit awed by this guy. I asked him about dealing with his company's attorneys .. it was nothing specific, but I got the sense that the executive in front of me, could in fact change the results, even with those kind of lawyers and that business environment.

I was told once long ago that it is a leadership job to set the culture of the company, the way contracts are written and enforced is part of that. There is a very wide margin of behavior overall in the business world. Let's not rush to the worst of it here.

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#148

Post by _odey » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

ptx wrote: post #142

StrLght wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but here's the exact words from the contract: >You will give the Company full written details of all Inventions and of all works embodying Intellectual Property Rights made wholly or partially by You at any time during the course of Your Employment (whether or not during working hours or using Company premises or resources) which relate to, or are reasonably capable of being used in, the business of the Compa…

> You will give the Company full written details of all ... works ... made wholly or partially by You at any time ... whether or not during working hours ... which relate to, or are reasonably capable of being used in, the business of the Company [...] all Intellectual Property Rights subsisting ... in all such Inventions and works will ... vest in the Company absolutely. Was this intended as an example of a desirabl…

That's not how I see it, the important part being "which relate to, or are reasonably capable of being used in, the business".

This part was missing from my old contracts.

As far as I understand it, this clause does not force you to even disclose projects you have that are completely unrelated to the company's business. Key word "business" here, not "company".

Example: your personal blog is not related to the fact that your employer develops and sells databases. So whatever code you write to develop/manage your blog won't be a "invention" the company needs to know about and own. This is in contrast to a contract that states "whether during our normal hours of business or otherwise, or at the premises or using our facilities or otherwise, for the whole term" like I used to have. Here the word business does not even refer to the company activity, but to the 9-6 schedule.

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#149

Post by friedman23 » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 3:40 PM UTC

marcinzm wrote: post #78

A note to Bumble, this makes me not want to work for you or anyone who is currently in a related leadership position at Bumble (ie: eng leadership, etc.). Given the lack of supply in engineering the bad publicity is going to cost you more than any miniscule gain. edit: And I don't even publish OSS anymore but if you're willing to go after an employee for something this petty what else would you go after them for.

This is such a hilariously way to shoot yourself in the foot. Software engineers that work on open source in their free time are almost always extremely talented, and will definitely look at this news and never consider joining this company. Bumble just got added to the same list as Amazon of companies I will just simply not even apply to when searching for a job.

edit: looks like there is more to this story than the tweets are suggesting. If this wasn't obvious, don't build projects that are derived from work you are being paid to do and don't do them on the company laptop.

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#150

Post by tomxor » Sun, Dec 05, 2021, 3:50 PM UTC

tomxor wrote: post #90

cassianoleal wrote: post #82

Many years ago I had a job offer at Badoo in the UK. After many rounds of going back-and-forth with the contract, me trying to better understand certain clauses, them going back to the lawyers, etc. I told them I'd be happy to sign if they removed the caluses that stated pretty much anything I created on or off hours belonged to them. They went back to the lawyers and came back to me saying that this is not the first…

I had a similar situation with my current job, but with a happy ending. The contract was "standard" but others who also read it thoroughly had the same issue with broad, overreaching clauses that essentially attempt to claim complete IP ownership of everything the employee ever touched. The directors were very reasonable and understood my concerns, we eventually managed to remove or reword all of the offending parts.…

> but obviously in this case Bumble seem to actively be exploiting these clauses for gain rather than protection.

replying to myself because this is incorrect, as others have pointed out it seems to be in the grey area of previously open sourced work that derived from the company's IP... Which is not uncommon, i'm sure plenty of people here have open sourced small projects from their work with their employers permission... and there's the question, did this person have permission, if they did then Bumble is trying to "unopensource" a previous decision, if they didn't approve it then I guess the employee has broken their contract.