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Google claims copyright on employee side projects

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Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#251

Post by Aunche »

danShumway wrote: post #233
Aunche wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean. You can just always ignore what lawyers say, and just work on open source projects under a pseudonym while you're employed there, which is what the OP did anyways. The worst thing that happened to the OP is that he pissed off some lawyers, and got into an argument with a guy. Also, Google can't own any of your code you did before you're employed there, just any new code from when you're employed by them.

> The worst thing that happened to the OP is that he pissed off some lawyers, and got into an argument with a guy The worst thing that happened to OP was that he lost control of his project. > I ended up having to hand over maintainership of usbmuxd. ---- > You can just always ignore what lawyers say, and just work on open source projects under a pseudonym while you're employed there I am not a lawyer, but this seems…

> I am not a lawyer, but this seems like very bad advice.

That's kind of my point. Millions of people have been employed by companies with similar policies, and undoubtably many of them chose to ignore the "correct" legal moves because it's just easier. If Google really wanted to screw people over, they could, but that doesn't seem to be happening.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#252

Post by Aunche »

marcan_42 wrote: post #234
Aunche wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean. You can just always ignore what lawyers say, and just work on open source projects under a pseudonym while you're employed there, which is what the OP did anyways. The worst thing that happened to the OP is that he pissed off some lawyers, and got into an argument with a guy. Also, Google can't own any of your code you did before you're employed there, just any new code from when you're employed by them.

I actually didn't piss off the lawyers; the lawyer working under cdibona was a nice guy, and his contributions to the email thread reasonable. cdibona alone flamed me, and then personally banned me from the process. I hear he's not in charge of that department any more. Maybe that's why the policy is less onerous now.

I see. I appreciate the clarification!

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#253

Post by ghaff »

marcan_42 wrote: post #194
teddyh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To have impact, ideas need to spread. Since most people don’t blog anymore, they can’t reblog other people’s blog posts. But they can retweet other people’s tweets.

This, pretty much. I do have a blog, but 1) it's mildly more annoying to update, 2) I have >30K Twitter followers, I assume maybe 5 people have my RSS feed in a reader somewhere, and 3) I didn't actually expect it to turn out this long, but I was already typing things up into the Twitter boxes, so shrug , and 4) Twitter seems to be the place for this sort of discussion these days; my blog doesn't even have comments.…

Of course, you can/should link to the blog from Twitter. But clicking through is still some friction so Twitter alone sort of substitutes for the one or two paragraph blogpost "sketches" I used to write. (I preach creating a blog version of longer threads but I don't really do it myself in practice.)

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#254

Post by Zenbit_UX »

UserIsUnused wrote: post #217
Zenbit_UX wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh, please. It's standard industry practice for companies to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up with, even "on their own time". Is your argument really "it's no big deal cause everyone's doing it"?

He said it a bit different "it's no big deal not only because everyone else is doing it but also because the referred company is one that does it the less."

The added fluff at the end doesn't legitimize his stance for me. This seems to be a common belief in the US: "that because this is the way it is, this is the way it should be".

I can't wait for US citizens to fight back and get some real labor and pro consumer laws in place. It would only take a cursory look at what Europeans and Canadians have to realize that the US is setup for corporations to thrive, not people.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#255

Post by pbhjpbhj »

martin-adams wrote: post #38
draugadrotten wrote: post #11

Does society accept this behaviour outside tech? Imagine that a Michelin restaurant would claim copyright on the dishes cooked by the chef in his spare time. Or that the big farm would ask for a piece of those carrots grown in the back yard.

Intellectual Property and Copyright aren't quite the same thing. The IP is the idea, whereas the copyright is the specific recipe. So in my mind, the equivalent would be using your learned cooking skills for another restaurant while working at a Michelin restaurant. They both serve food (competing or related industry), but while the dishes are different, the techniques to create them come from the same source. I woul…

If a chef makes a cookery vlog, at home, should the restaurant that employs them get the proceeds?

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#256

Post by lettergram »

tytso wrote: post #95

Oh, please. It's standard industry practice for companies to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up with, even "on their own time". The problem is it's extremely difficult to say, figure out when someone might have invented some super clever idea which can be pantented "on their own time". This was true when I worked for MIT, VA Linux, IBM, and Google. At VA Linux it was the VC's which insisted on…

Pretty much every company I know does this:

> If you take that option then it really has to be done on your own time, and must not use any company resources, meaning not on a company laptop, or on a company network, etc. This is rare, and I'm not aware of many other companies that give employees that option.

It’s actually a California law that the company can’t own what you do on your own time with your own equipment.

Further, I’ve gone through this process with two employers. All I did was disclose what I was doing and they set limitations on MY EMPLOYMENT at their company. So they wouldn’t take the IP, just they may not continue to employ me. The limitation was simply that “I couldn’t willfully help competitors to the company” then they listed a few industries. This was true for two fortune 100 companies I worked for.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#257

Post by rs23296008n1 »

S_A_P wrote: post #58
rs23296008n1 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DRY?

Dont repeat yourself. IF you have code that solves a problem, dont rewrite it at every gig...

Now thats a philosophy I both agree and disagree with.

Agree: omg do i need to write this form again? Seriously just write a library already!

Disagree: this problem is subtly yet incompatibly different to what I've seen and dealt with before. The library would need x,y,z but their IP demands mean I'd lose rights to my closed-source library or be forced to open source it to keep using it elsewhere.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#258

Post by kyle-rb »

q3k wrote: post #114
fierarul wrote: post #104

> Oh, please. It's standard industry practice for companies to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up with, even "on their own time". In the US. Problem is the US is infecting the rest of the world too, especially through subsidiaries which basically just translate from English the 'standard' employment contract. I had to refuse employment in Romania since the clauses were so broad and basically i…

Can confirm from my experience (~10 years in the industry). I've never even heard of this practice until I applied to Google. None of the EU companies I've worked at before had anything like this. None of the EU companies I've worked at since had anything like this. It's US imperialism, nothing less.

I did a group project in my senior year of college, working with a US division of a German company, and they needed us to sign an NDA, which was far more egregious than anything Google requires. One part of it was:

>The Undersigned agrees that any inventions or ideas in whole or part conceived or made by the undersigned during or after the term of their relationship with $COMPANY [...] shall be considered part of the Confidential Information for purposes of this Agreement.

Basically saying they own everything I invent forever. I responded to them, basically saying this was ridiculous, and they said it's "generally implied" that this only applied to the context of the project, but they could amend it to make that explicit it if I wanted. I said yes, and after several weeks they sent us a revised version.

But I didn't have much of a choice in this; this project is a requirement to graduate. My friend, working with another company that also required an NDA, refused to sign it and basically fought with the school of engineering administration over it. He ended up finding a new project to work on by himself, on an open-source product, so it didn't require an NDA.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#259

Post by behringer »

tytso wrote: post #95

Oh, please. It's standard industry practice for companies to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up with, even "on their own time". The problem is it's extremely difficult to say, figure out when someone might have invented some super clever idea which can be pantented "on their own time". This was true when I worked for MIT, VA Linux, IBM, and Google. At VA Linux it was the VC's which insisted on…

It's not standard practice and I would never agree to it. It's standard practice to claim ownership of things done at work or for the job itself.
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