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

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

#151

Post by danschuller »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #88
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…

My experience from the other side of the fence is that this is pretty standard, i.e. nobody would really bother with changing the standard contract for one potential employee unless they were perceived as a crucial asset. The people who do the hiring, the ones who make the decisions and the ones who will work with you later - these are very different groups of people, with some (very temporary) overlap. The hiring on…

I've had contracts amended on request, I don't think it's unusual or uncommon. Though I'm a data point of one :)

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

#152

Post by marcinzm »

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.

>After reading more closely, it appears both repos are derivative works of pojects that Bumble (aka Badoo) owns.

Which Baboo has released under an Apache 2 license from what I can tell. Your comment makes it sound like they were proprietary libraries.

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

#153

Post by AlexCoventry »

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.

They say they're "inspired by" Badoo libraries. That's not enough to call them derivative works, at least for copyright purposes.

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

#154

Post by btrettel »

1MachineElf wrote: post #130
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #124

As an employee, I’ve managed to evade these clauses by negotiating them as early as possible in the interview process. With smaller companies, it hasn’t really been as difficult as I expected. However, my local laws provide some additional protection against this type of thing. I didn’t even realize it until I consulted with a lawyer who pointed out that my state’s laws don’t allow companies to claim IP generated in…

Can you share what state law provides this protection?

When I was in grad school back in 2015, I took an intellectual property law class, and as I recall there are some significant differences between US states in IP law with respect to the employee's rights.

I haven't seen a good summary of all US states on this, but here are a few links from my notes on the differences between various states:

https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2667463&cid=39013501

https://web.archive.org/web/20100613122930/http://www.ieeeus...

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

#155

Post by marcinzm »

friedman23 wrote: post #149
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…

>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.

My point is that this is petty rather than if they can legally do this. They didn't ask for the repos to be taken down, and the projects the repos are inspired by are open source already by Baboo from what I can tell. I've found that companies which are petty about one thing will be petty about other things so are not good places to work.

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

#156

Post by dbg31415 »

I do all of my side work under an alias, just to keep this from happening.

Making it one-step harder for lawyers is generally all it takes.

Don't draw lines from your GitHub account that you use at work to the GitHub account that holds your side projects.

Every time I start with a new company, I spin up a new GitHub account just for that company.

Sorry this happened to you.

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

#157

Post by PragmaticPulp »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #153
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They say they're "inspired by" Badoo libraries. That's not enough to call them derivative works, at least for copyright purposes.

Right! But they were developed while the author was working for Badoo/Bumble.

You can't develop something "inspired by" your day job, while working the day job in parallel, and then claim it isn't related to the day job.

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

#158

Post by [deleted] »

marcinzm wrote: post #152
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>After reading more closely, it appears both repos are derivative works of pojects that Bumble (aka Badoo) owns. Which Baboo has released under an Apache 2 license from what I can tell. Your comment makes it sound like they were proprietary libraries.

[deleted]

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

#159

Post by _odey »

_odey wrote: post #148
ptx wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

But I do understand ptx's confusion in this thread.

After reading through all the tweets and replies, especially this one https://twitter.com/_strlght/status/1467460142279143428 where @arkivanov replies they have the same clause in their contract, this one being 19.4, my belief is that there are other clauses besides this one (19.4.1.. or 19.5 onwards) that place even more restrictions.

I think we need to see the entire section 19 to be able to judge.

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

#160

Post by PragmaticPulp »

btrettel wrote: post #141

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 f…

> I've always thought that if a company claims rights over what you do outside worktime

A lot of people are assuming this was done separate from his job, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Badoo/Bumble isn't trying to claim ownership of other projects he did, just the ones that were closely related to his Badoo/Bumble work during his employment.

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