My Ideas, My Boss’s Property
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My Ideas, My Boss’s Property
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Re: My Ideas, My Boss’s Property
#2If part of your job is to create ideas within some domain, and you can't control exactly when said ideas will crystallize, should it matter whether you 'got' an idea whilst 'at work' rather than in the shower, or on the way to work?
The line is difficult to draw precisely with legal language, so companies err on the side which protects them best (hoping employees will sign anyway, given they've already gone through the interview process and are likely to have similar terms at other employers).
Re: My Ideas, My Boss’s Property
#3"You’ve reached your limit of 10 complimentary articles this month."
Re: My Ideas, My Boss’s Property
#4I've always been particularly confused by the contract clauses which specify that all work of the employee during their time at the company is property of the company itself. Does this mean that if I develop some completely unrelated software in my spare time while working as a programmer at a large company, that the software I created at home also belongs to my employer? What if I was to write a book during that same time? Is anyone aware of legal battles fought over this type of contract clause? It seems fairly prevalent in the industry today.
Re: My Ideas, My Boss’s Property
#5If part of your job is to create ideas within some domain, and you can't control exactly when said ideas will crystallize, should it matter whether you 'got' an idea whilst 'at work' rather than in the shower, or on the way to work? The line is difficult to draw precisely with legal language, so companies err on the side which protects them best (hoping employees will sign anyway, given they've already gone through t…
The bigger problem is not the ideas that relate to your every day job... But Say your a Aerospace Engineer working on rockets and on your off time you write a scifi book, after your done you take it to a publisher, they publish it, and then your employer claims ownership over that book... and sues you
That type of shit happens all the time, and while that is an extreme example, there are all kinds of examples like a programmer getting paid to work on a billing system writes a childrens game for which the company claims ownership over... etc etc etc.
The idea that just because your employed means you should give up any and all rights to your brain is ridiculous...
There has to be a happy median there somewhere
Re: My Ideas, My Boss’s Property
#6pretty sure this won't go away any time soon, so in the meantime, just jot down your idea in your own device at break time.
My take on it, anything done / written during 'office-hour' will be deemed company property.
Re: My Ideas, My Boss’s Property
#7I've always been particularly confused by the contract clauses which specify that all work of the employee during their time at the company is property of the company itself. Does this mean that if I develop some completely unrelated software in my spare time while working as a programmer at a large company, that the software I created at home also belongs to my employer? What if I was to write a book during that sam…
I dislike it (and most forward-thinking companies wouldn't risk scaring off people who are the type that work on their own time), however I can see the reasons.
How do they know you did it at home, not during work hours? How do they know it didn't affect your work? If you're salaried, there aren't set start/stop times. How do they know they weren't paying you at the time you came up with the idea, or thought through a problem? Did you do it on a work laptop? Did you use a copy of Photoshop that work paid for? Is it something you did for your job, and now you want to sell it to other people -- even if the code has been rewritten?
Again, I don't think it's very enforceable or even a good idea. However, I can understand why a lawyer would slip it in.
Re: My Ideas, My Boss’s Property
#8I've always been particularly confused by the contract clauses which specify that all work of the employee during their time at the company is property of the company itself. Does this mean that if I develop some completely unrelated software in my spare time while working as a programmer at a large company, that the software I created at home also belongs to my employer? What if I was to write a book during that sam…
Of course, IANAL. I also don't like those kinds of employment clauses.
The way I understand it those clauses are written to prevent the kind of situation where you have a problem at work, can't solve it, go home, solve it, then offer to license it to your employer the following day for a reasonable charge.
Re: My Ideas, My Boss’s Property
#9.......remind me again how the courts in Texas work?
"In 2004 a court in Texas ordered a former Alcatel employee to give his former employer a software algorithm — which existed entirely in his mind. The idea, which he was still working on and was still too abstract and incomplete to be a patentable invention, was nevertheless deemed the property of Alcatel, forcing the ex-employee to turn over the algorithm in the months after he was fired."
Re: My Ideas, My Boss’s Property
#10I've always been particularly confused by the contract clauses which specify that all work of the employee during their time at the company is property of the company itself. Does this mean that if I develop some completely unrelated software in my spare time while working as a programmer at a large company, that the software I created at home also belongs to my employer? What if I was to write a book during that sam…
It can certainly mean that. Very few people ever do, but we should all show contracts, particularly employment contracts, to lawyers before signing them. If you don't think it necessary, check out how NFL cheerleaders are treated: http://goo.gl/2CUWxm