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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

#311

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #207
neltnerb wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that they are likely following the advice of 3rd party lawyers, but that absolutely does not let them off the hook. Legal documents just aren't that hard to understand, if the organization doesn't bother reading them or takes a maximalist approach that is absolutely their choice. You shouldn't need to back and forth and have leverage to get a reasonable contract, the "standard contract" should be balanced. If…

Yeah the fact that this "dice roll" arbitrary precedent from old boilerplate and 3rd partly lawyers is so hard to displace indicates the weak position of labor in the labor market. Sure, you can be a bit conspiratorial and say that this works out in the employers favor, helps suppress side projects that might become profitable, etc. etc. but I prefer the simple-stupid reading that the weaker part has trouble pushing…

Keep in mind that this labour that's considered utself shortage, overpayed and somewhat 'elite'. Most devs thing standard issues of labour don't apply to them. Yet we can barely get a useless clause changed in a contract

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

#312

Post by yawnxyz »

I have a slightly unrelated question and I'm in need of advice:

I'm about to work on a grant, with another PI at University of Sydney for a project we've worked on for four years. This grant is to advance our mission of building software system for supporting personalized bacteriophage therapy. Essentially, we're building software to make personalized therapy possible in this space, so we're building something critical for the project.

We're building the software to get funding to "phase 2" which is 50x (8 figures) the amount of money the grant's already received. Currently we're employed on the project as contract researchers, but we (and our PI) wants us there in Australia in person. Since we're based in the US/Can, we need to get work visas, which require us to be employed by the grant directly.

My question is: we have to sign employment agreements for the university, and our contracts look very much like the "we'll take everything you own, including your ideas you came up with in your shower at your own home" kind of contracts. We've already pushed back and laid out our position — we want to be able to continue building this project past the length of employment and past Phase 2, whether we get it or not. I don't really care if they get full, perpetual license to whatever I create there; it's most likely going to be OSS anyway. I just don't want them to prevent us from using it or OSS-ing it in the future.

Has anyone else dealt with universities and institutions in this manner? Do they usually operate like companies in this way?

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

#313

Post by notacoward »

BeefWellington wrote: post #296
notacoward wrote: post #115

I worked for a company once that had this sort of "we own everything" IP clause. They tried to get me to sign it after I had already started. I crossed out that part, initialed the change, and sent it back unsigned. Ended up going back and forth a few times, and then it got dropped behind a desk or something and we all forgot about it. Not surprisingly, I suppose, that company turned out to be a bit of a mess for oth…

I once had a company demand I sign a non-compete after I'd handed in my notice. I honestly don't understand what kind of thought process goes into this. In my case it was pure bridge burning and I have no idea why they thought they could pull it off. They even tried to claim they had the full backing of their legal team despite none of the legal team being present in the meeting.

They hope you'll be an idiot. That's no reflection on you, just to be clear. It's more hoping that you'll be distracted or just have some sort of brain fart despite being intelligent most of the time. After all, it costs them nothing to try, so why not? It's kind of the same rationale as that car-warranty spam. It doesn't have to work often to become habit.

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

#315

Post by lolinder »

_6lik wrote: post #303
lolinder wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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

That's not how the law works. You're either right that your solution works or you're wrong. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm warning you that you really need to talk to an attorney before assuming that this practice will keep you safe.

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

#316

Post by leeoniya »

_6lik wrote: post #306
leeoniya wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?!

> Don't have money for that.

and how about money to defend a potential lawsuit? you're gambling with more than just your job, honestly.

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

#317

Post by twox2 »

brundolf wrote: post #224
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…

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…

I work at a startup that had a similar clause. During hiring, I asked them to add some language that it was specific only to work that is competing in nature with the core business. CEO was happy to oblige. No issues with me doing side projects so far. It has been 4+ years. Big companies probably suck harder though.

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

#318

Post by DarylZero »

hallway_monitor wrote: post #168
LightHugger wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only works if he wrote them during work hours. If he didn't then why would the company own it? Anything you do off the clock is none of the company's business.

Generally the company has a claim to closely-related work even if done off-hours. You can't e.g. clone your company's product off-hours, or even make a closely-related product without the companty having a valid claim on that IP.

When the company releases that work under an Apache license, they do give explicit permission to everyone to do that.

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

#319

Post by neltnerb »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #311
Ericson2314 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the fact that this "dice roll" arbitrary precedent from old boilerplate and 3rd partly lawyers is so hard to displace indicates the weak position of labor in the labor market. Sure, you can be a bit conspiratorial and say that this works out in the employers favor, helps suppress side projects that might become profitable, etc. etc. but I prefer the simple-stupid reading that the weaker part has trouble pushing…

Keep in mind that this labour that's considered utself shortage, overpayed and somewhat 'elite'. Most devs thing standard issues of labour don't apply to them. Yet we can barely get a useless clause changed in a contract

Honestly my main hope is that junior devs of ten years ago have had to put up with this long enough that they're senior enough now to stick up for the direct reports they perhaps have now.

Of course, it's far more common to develop the attitude that if it was "standard" when they were junior and they turned out alright then surely it's fine. And for 99% of them it will have turned out fine.

I've repeatedly heard from older engineers that you shouldn't worry too much about what the contract says because [you're going to get it perfect so it won't come up, the customer in question would never, it's just standard language so you can ignore it, if you try to push back you just won't get the work] and while I understand the desire to ignore the problem and instead do the fun engineering this just seems ridiculous to me.

What I takeaway from this is that engineers, like any reasonable human, aren't interested in legal documents and have been trained over decades by companies to not care how abusive their contracts are, because they personally haven't been bitten.

"Sure, you hear about it from time to time but it'd never happen to me," is an unfortunate attitude for the only people senior enough to do anything about it. I wish I saw a better way out but it's hard not to empathize with someone who has been doing engineering for 40 years and has had to sign scores of employment agreements and just wants to build some stuff before they retire.

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

#320

Post by yawnxyz »

activitypea wrote: post #144

The two repos being contested are: 1) MVIKotlin - "Extendable MVI framework [...] inspired by Badoo MVICore library" 2) Decompose - "Kotlin BLoCs [...] inspired by Badoos RIBs fork of the Uber RIBs framework" I hate corporations more than most people here, but this might be as black and white as the title and comment section imply

If Uber came up with it, and Badoo forked it, does it imply Uber could one day sue to own a % of Badoo/Bumble?
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