I think my Sony (Sony Europe not SCE) contract said "in the course of employment" which I went back to HR for clarification that it meant things related to or done for work. The in/during difference being very key. I seem to recall that I got the necessary clarifications and I've left now so no need to worry.
The Sex Tape Litmus Test
81–90 of 138 posts
Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test
#82(tl;dr: in California, such agreements are unenforceable)
I don't know what state the author was in when he was working for Sony, but California State law prohibits such arrangements in employer agreements (Labor code section 2870):
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab...
2870. (a) Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or her rights in an invention to his or her employer shall not apply to an invention that the employee developed entirely on his or her own time without using the employer's equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information except for those inventions that either: (1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer's business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer; or (2) Result from any work performed by the employee for the employer. (b) To the extent a provision in an employment agreement purports to require an employee to assign an invention otherwise excluded from being required to be assigned under subdivision (a), the provision is against the public policy of this state and is unenforceable.
Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test
#83Every time I've gotten one of these documents I've amended it to "any IP for aspect foo of business bar." Example: video training software, or freemium mobile games. My employers have not objected, and it's a restriction I cane live with.
Honest employers want to keep you from competing with them while on the payroll, and want to avoid any claims that company IP belongs to you. Amend the document to address that and they may agree.
Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Negotiate for the removal of these clauses from your contract and don't sign it if they won't remove them. Sometimes this may mean passing on a job but if everyone did this then employers wouldn't try to get away with it.
> Negotiate for the removal of these clauses from your contract and don't sign it if they won't remove them. Sometimes this may mean passing on a job but if everyone did this then employers wouldn't try to get away with it. The problem is that the effectiveness of this relies on the bargaining power of the employees, which, in a "buyer's market" is not that much. Better to get the law to change to forbid such abuses…
If that was the case, sure. But in what world is this a buyer's market? At the last tech meetup I went to:
Employers looking for developers: 11 Developers looking for work: 2
Austin, TX, for reference.
Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The primary function of a legal department is to provide advice that prevents legally actionable mistakes. This advice does not have to be sane, or efficient, (...) Strong disagreement. As a counterport, would you agree to the following: ``the primary function of a programming department is to crank out code. the code doesn't have to run predictably, nor be maintainable nor indeed have any business requirements. KL…
It seems like a lot of engineers, both here and elsewhere, have a very simplistic view of what other departments do. I've seen similar simplistic statements about design and management. I guess that's just part of human nature, to develop the view that only your work is complex or nuanced.
It's not just work, and there's a name for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outgroup_homogeneity_bias
Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test
#86California has a nice law that says that the employee owns IP created on his own time, unrelated to work, etc. This is a reason I moved to CA: the state I was in lacked such a law, and all the tech companies had contracts that failed the sex tape test. I suspect that for a place to flourish like Silicon Valley, it needs a law that protects self bootstrapping startups.
I guess the "unrelated to work" might be a point of debate once you create IP of high value. In fact, in Germany we have the "Arbeitnehmererfindungsgesetz (ARBNERFG)" [1] which stipulates that your employer has first right to all patents and inventions related to your work, even if you create them in your spare time. The basic reasoning is that your employer supplies you with all tools and ressources required for the…
It's also ridiculously outdated. It's from 1957 and based on an outdated, traditional understanding of "big" industrial/engineering companies and their employees ("the little guys"). Also, it protects the companies' interests to the detriment of the employees' interests, which is understandable given that it is based on a war-time law (WWII) which was supposed to support German war engineering.
Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
A union: some sellers of labor merge into a single legal entity, and it becomes illegal for some purchasers of labor to buy from alternate suppliers. To translate to another field: Apple and MS merge, and now consumers can't use Linux. Laws enforcing a requirement to purchase from a cartel are about as far from a free market as you can get. Saying free market supporters should favor unionization is like saying free m…
Unions don't have a legally enforced monopoly on labor. They obtain a monopoly or oligopoly through market power. The problem being that without unions, labor becomes subject to oligopsony buying power and Ricardo's Law of Rent kicks in.
They obtain a monopoly or oligopoly through market power.
So if a union lacks market power, an employer is legally free to fire the union employees and replace them with non-union employees at market wages?
The problem being that without unions, labor becomes subject to oligopsony buying power and Ricardo's Law of Rent kicks in.
Can you explain this claim? While it's certainly true in a few narrow fields (chemistry/biotech, various specialized corners of academia), it's hardly true in the economy at large. In what fields do you believe an oligopsony is present?
Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unions in the US always have specific views that employees often don't share. Everything is about retirement, preservation of existing employees, and supporting other unions. The problem is that most tech workers want incompetent workers fired, since they make other workers lives more difficult. The field also moves fast enough that credentialization is not particularly helpful. In fact, it can be harmful. Unions wou…
Sure, but my point is that a die hard free market advocate should either disagree with what you just said, or swallow that hard pill and say that the problems with unions are just a necessary evil. Instead, many seem to be vehemently anti-union while still holding to a "the free market will solve everything" point of view. I'm not saying that unions are perfect. I'm saying that it's inconsistent to admit that they ca…
I don't see that as inconsistent at all. Why can't you be pro-free-market and anti-union? You can agree with the concept of a free market, but disagree with how unions currently operate. You appear to be confusing "I hate how unions tend to behave" with "I think unions should be forbidden".
I think unions can do great things to protect the workers they represent, but I hate that many (most?) of them seem more focused on things like retirement benefits and policies that have the effect of making it difficult to impossible to fire bad employees.
Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
A union: some sellers of labor merge into a single legal entity, and it becomes illegal for some purchasers of labor to buy from alternate suppliers. To translate to another field: Apple and MS merge, and now consumers can't use Linux. Laws enforcing a requirement to purchase from a cartel are about as far from a free market as you can get. Saying free market supporters should favor unionization is like saying free m…
At issue is the part "laws enforcing a requirement." I'm hard pressed to think of any advocate of a free market who wants this law in place. But a closed shop arose not from legal statute but by an agreement between the company and the union. There's no need for government involvement, except to settle contract disagreement. In fact, it's quite the opposite! Closed shops are illegal in the US, under Taft-Hartley Act,…
The question to the audience is, shouldn't a free market advocate want to reduce both the laws which give unions specific power AND those which take power away from unions?
Yes. I'd love to scrap all laws relating to unions and have the law treat them as worker-owned consulting companies.
Is an employer a sort of monopolist? I believe they are. While there are exceptions (IT in the Bay Area during the dot-com era being an obvious one), for many people it is not easy to quit and easily find new employment. Otherwise Nevada wouldn't have a 10% unemployment rate.
Can you explain this claim? What prevents any employee from leaving and selling their labor to another willing party?
Many people find it difficult to leave and find higher paying work, but that just means their current employer is paying them at or above market [1].
Unemployment is (according to Keynesians at least) a mismatch between employee's desired wages and market wages. It has nothing to do with monopoly power. A simple way to test this - is unemployment higher in sectors with a smaller number of firms?
[1] A common reason for this is the accumulation of firm-specific knowledge. That is to say, an employee's value to the employer is X+Y, where X is general knowledge (useful to all employers) and Y is useful only to the current employer. I.e., X is general programming, Y is knowledge of a specific legacy system. This is a situation with both a monopoly and a monopsony - the employer can't find outside employees with legacy system knowledge and the employee can't find outside employers with that specific legacy system.
Re: The Sex Tape Litmus Test
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The primary function of a legal department is to provide advice that prevents legally actionable mistakes. This advice does not have to be sane, or efficient, (...) Strong disagreement. As a counterport, would you agree to the following: ``the primary function of a programming department is to crank out code. the code doesn't have to run predictably, nor be maintainable nor indeed have any business requirements. KL…
It seems like a lot of engineers, both here and elsewhere, have a very simplistic view of what other departments do. I've seen similar simplistic statements about design and management. I guess that's just part of human nature, to develop the view that only your work is complex or nuanced.
In this particular case though, there's not a lot of complexity or nuance, is there? It's a blanket "We own all your IP" clause in a contract.