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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

#301

Post by Notanothertoo »

le-mark wrote: post #113
miohtama wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> their job is to maximize the company profit and security This is a naive view imo. Legal counsel advises leadership and protects them when they eff up or otherwise go to far. Legal doesn’t run the business. I actually heard a particularly coarse, unsympathetic CEO say this in a townhall once. It is true though.

I think this is the naive take. Depending on company size and industry lawyers do have business input. There are man tech, and insurance, and finance companies that employ legal strategies to drive business. The big ones that come to mind would be Microsoft, Intel, and oracle.

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

#302

Post by buro9 »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #220
buro9 wrote: post #184

Under UK law your employer arguably has a claim to your IP if any of the following are true: 1) They asked you to work on this as part of your employment 2) You worked on this during your employed hours 3) You worked on this on employer provided equipment If you can prove that this is an undertaking of your own (especially if it pre-dates employment) and you avoid doing any work (not even replying to Git issues) duri…

Even if your open source work is based on your employer's IP?

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/manual-of-patent-practice-mopp/s...

IANAL but two things would factor in:

1) Is this a traditional breach of IP law, i.e. the open source project infringing on a patent or IP of the employer?

2) Did this predate your employment and conversation to be employed? i.e. could contributing to this project constitute as furthering the employers business interest and reasonably be considered a derivative work from being employed?

The latter seems to be what you're describing, and there are examples in the manual cited above. If it's a different area of work than your employer then it's of no consequence, but yes if you're using your employment to further your understanding and to make something that roughly fulfils the need - then this falls under my earlier comment of "They asked you to work on this as part of your employment" and you would likely have to give up the project.

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

#303

Post by _6lik »

lolinder wrote: post #292
_6lik wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh it's not like I am trying to steal its IP from my company. I don't do that shit for everything I do. But only for the ideations that I know are great and think I am going to use later. In that regard, programming can be easily generalised. Let me give you some examples. 1) Let's us say my company wants me to create a full stack dashboard that helps you visualise the inventory. I can just create a corona dashboard…

> I don't do that shit for everything I do. But only for the ideations that I know are great and think I am going to use later. "I thought I might need it later" does not constitute a legal defense if your employer comes after you for IP theft. IANAL, but I can't see what foundation your strategy rests on. That the code is generic does not change the fact that it was written by you to solve a problem that your employ…

I’d like to differ. The foundation of my strategy is that I shouldn’t be obligated to run every code I write with my company legal. On the contrary, the simple reason that my code is generic absolves me from having to consult my company for anything I decide to write in my own time on my own property. I'm never going to say “I 'took' it because I thought I might use it later”. That clearly implies theft. My reasoning is “I wrote it first in the open source and then I thought it might be useful in the company that why I ‘reused’ it here.”

I don't think you got the premise. Like I said earlier, my motive is not to steal company IP but to keep my stuff my own so that I can use that whenever and wherever I want. That's what I tried to demonstrate with the examples above and I purposely provided multiple use cases. I am genuinely curious, if you can go through the example scenarios I cited and tell me which one of them the employer can claim as theirs, considering it is neither into healthcare not aerospace.

Nevertheless, I think we have our separate approaches and I think we can agree to disagree.

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

#304

Post by _6lik »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #238
_6lik wrote: post #228

This thing has been bugging me the first time signed an employment contract years ago. So from what I understand is that everything I do on conpany property (that includes coding in a pub but on the company laptop) belongs to the company. So what I do is to first code it (any new idea that I'm working on) at home on my personal setup (including cloud an all). Then I release everything on a Apache V2 + MIT combo with…

That sounds like the standard employment contract; not necessarily the "shower clause." It makes sense that the employer (or contractee) can claim that all work, done on their paid time, or on their equipment, is theirs. i.e., if I use my employers' laptop to develop OS software, and they can prove it, then they have a strong (and, basically, legit) claim on my work. Same with time that I'm being paid for, and suppos…

FWIW, I just found out that shower clauses are unenforceable (at most places) if it did not occur in paid time notwithstanding the fact whether you signed such a contract or not. There has to be a payment in lieu of your services otherwise such terms are deemed to be void.

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

#305

Post by _6lik »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #293
_6lik wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah... somebody needs to always make sure not to be the bigger fool... 1) Git commits have timestamps. 2) Proving I did on company laptop is their onus. Innocent until proven guilty. ;-P 3) I do that. Along with randomisation of sample data. but yeah, you make a very important point in general. 99% of people get screwed on such things. 4) If I do something using company laptop, it is bound to be logged somewhere. Al…

git commit --amend --date="Wed Feb 16 14:00 2011 +0100" --no-edit Certain proponents of Fossil and Mercurial will tell you that this is an advantage of those systems - They're fooling themselves, because you can make those edits, there's just not nice tooling for them.

So I guess it works in my favor because I own the git repo.

There's always something, isn't it. I can change my git timestamps and the employer can change its server log timestamps if there's maleficence at either side. That's a completely different territory then.

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

#306

Post by _6lik »

leeoniya wrote: post #271
_6lik wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually that's why I release the code on Apache/MIT combo. This way, I get to keep my code open source without forcing my company to release the modified code. Also there are no patent related issues as Apache handles that beautifully. This way, both of us get to be happy. All I want is that the original piece of my code is 1) mine for ever. Attribution wise. 2) open source for ever 3) every contributor to the code…

no matter how clever you think you're being, if you have not consulted an IP attorney about this, be prepared for some unpleasant surprises.

Don't have money for that. May be an IP attorney here on HN can help us out?!

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

#307

Post by kenneth »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #189
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…

This is something I dislike about the rise of DocuSign contracts: with paper, I can cross out clauses before signing and then the ball is in the other party’s court to decide if the result is acceptable. DocuSign makes this sort of flexibility much more difficult and is an implicit bias towards the employer’s side of negotiations. However, in CA at least, these clauses are limited by law and, as long as your employer…

DocuSign actually let's you download documents to paper sign and reupload. You could do the same on DocuSign.

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

#308

Post by vaporary »

stavros wrote: post #275
brundolf wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add an anecdote: on my last job search I got offers from two different but very similar companies (both around ~200 people). I got one first, read through the contract, saw the standard clause about owning your whole life. I told them it was a deal-breaker if we couldn't get it changed. I got the standard response "oh we never act on that, lots of people here have side-projects", etc. I told them if that was the p…

Thirded, I would never knowingly work for a company with a clause like that. Whenever I see it, I strike it out and return the signed contract. Usually it's easier for them to just sign and get it over with than to go into a whole thing with legal. This is startups, though. YMMV with big companies. Still, no way I'd accept them owning my considerable volume of (FOSS) side-projects.

I totally agree, but in the age of DocuSign, how do you modify a document, sign it, and send it back? I often feel like I'm stuck waiting for the other party to modify the document first so I can sign.

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

#309

Post by stavros »

vaporary wrote: post #308
stavros wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thirded, I would never knowingly work for a company with a clause like that. Whenever I see it, I strike it out and return the signed contract. Usually it's easier for them to just sign and get it over with than to go into a whole thing with legal. This is startups, though. YMMV with big companies. Still, no way I'd accept them owning my considerable volume of (FOSS) side-projects.

I totally agree, but in the age of DocuSign, how do you modify a document, sign it, and send it back? I often feel like I'm stuck waiting for the other party to modify the document first so I can sign.

I mentioned in another comment, I download the PDF, edit it, DocuSign it and send them a request to countersign.

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

#310

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

_6lik wrote: post #304
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like the standard employment contract; not necessarily the "shower clause." It makes sense that the employer (or contractee) can claim that all work, done on their paid time, or on their equipment, is theirs. i.e., if I use my employers' laptop to develop OS software, and they can prove it, then they have a strong (and, basically, legit) claim on my work. Same with time that I'm being paid for, and suppos…

FWIW, I just found out that shower clauses are unenforceable (at most places) if it did not occur in paid time notwithstanding the fact whether you signed such a contract or not. There has to be a payment in lieu of your services otherwise such terms are deemed to be void.

Thanks. I know that my company's HR had some clearly unenforceable stuff in their various contracts, noncompetes and NDAs, but they banked on folks not having the means to fight it.
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