381–390 of 484 posts
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doesn't the USA have the concept of a survey which is done for a fixed fee by a separate surveyor that looks at the property and lists any defects found,
Yes, but that doesn't include things like "are the homes next door foreclosures" or "are the schools terrible" or "are the nearby parks full of used needles".
'developed or promoted with existing Company IP' I wonder if someone writ a blog post on their company blog about their side project or something it would be company owned all of a sudden, or if they use an open source Github project?
'developed for use by the Company' what if the company just wants to use it and so claims they would be a customer so it was developed for use by them?
'related to an existing or prospective Company product or service' also sounds vague and how is something defined as related too?
I love how open they are about things but this still seems a bit onerous to me.
Once upon a time, I was looking for a job, in straightened circumstances. I found a so-so match, and since I was in danger of missing a mortgage payment, I decided to accept their offer. Pragmatism and all that. Well, I went in and picked up the documents, and told them I needed to read them before signing and returning them to the company. I looked at the IP clause, and it said the company owned anything and everyth…
Damn, that's poignant. Well, I hope you know you've had a massive impact on a lot of people. I greatly appreciate your technical and non-technical writing, and I evangelize Javascript Allongé whenever I have the chance.
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Your employer, of course, is Google; I know this from my own tussles with Google's OSPO, which exists primarily to ensure that engineers don't have lives outside of Google.
[Disclaimer: I work at Google.] I see no conclusive evidence in the parent comment that proves it's Google. I would've actually guessed Apple. My understanding is that Google actually has a reasonable process for this, and that people have taken advantage of it to start or contribute to projects in a personal capacity.
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Am I misunderstanding or are you implying that Joel would disapprove of side projects?
If you read is blog post I think it's pretty clear he thinks its fair to own all employee's side projects.
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> Now that you mention it, I'm not sure I want to employ someone who uses their creative energy for anything except the company's business. I don't think I'll ever understand that attitude. If you're a founder, the business just may be the work of your life. To expect the same level of dedication and obsession from your employees is utterly obscene. If you're lucky enough to find someone who genuinely feels that way,…
Put less brusquely, though, it sounds like what most early-stage startups (fairly) expect. At that stage, working long hours is usually part of the deal, and you're probably getting big equity and a substantial chunk of their last round. It would be a little weird if you had hours of free time for personal hacking after that.
There's nothing wrong with people who don't like Star Trek, but they're not going to have a very good time at the convention.
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all of that you either could have done yourself, or your inspector would have done for you. I don't begrudge anyone who wants to pay someone else to take a task off their hands, I do it all the time with various things like my lawn service, housekeeper, etc. But was the time they saved you worth the commission they made? When you're making 7% of the selling price, the answer to that seems likely to be no in many case…
I think the problem here is not that they don't add value, but that since the value is tied to a percentage of cost, and cost has gone way up as a percentage of income, it no longer appears to be worth the value in many cases. For a $100k home, it's fairly easy for the value added to surpass the amount paid. For a $500k home, the value added needs to be much higher. Then again, if you think of it as less value added…
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You're a dev+lawyer with large company experience -- if you were writing a federal law on employee IP assignment, what would it look like?
This is tough. I'm generally very pro-employee on this one. However, i've seen both sides of this. There really are crazy people, and plenty of them, who will try to use this to extract money from their employer, etc Generally, i'd say my view falls somewhere into what a small number of european countries do, and i think that would probably work well here: Employer still owns IP related to business. For the situation…
From an economics standpoint I think companies benefit from attracting innovative people. If you are hiring inventors, you want people who do it habitually and the best of those will feel uncomfortable signing away their free time. From this standpoint a company should worry about a new hire who doesn't object to a 24-hour IP assignment clause.
I haven't seen hard numbers on this but I imagine that patent applications went from more individuals in ~1900 (wright brothers era) to more corporations circa 1950 (IBM transistor era). I'm sure there are many reasons for this (larger companies in the 50s, postwar employment trends, less low hanging fruit in basic research). But it would be great to see that trend reverse.
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The result is that contract forms have become a sort of IP-free zone. Exactly. One of the sleaziest tricks used by Realtors (most Realtors are not lawyers) is getting clients to sign their forms: their terms usually have the word "percent" hard-coded into the contract. Rather than opening the door to hourly or fixed dollar amounts, they insist that their forms are the "standard". I heard one recently say in a public…
People suck at negotiating. Last time I did a buy/sell we did a deal with the real estate broker where we paid her $1000 upfront (0.5%) to sell the house for a 3% commission vs 7%. The trick was we gave her 60 days to sell the house exclusively without going on MLS, and she would credit the $1000 after 60 days if it sold on MLS (which means she gets almost nothing).
And then if it didn't sell in 60 days, she would get almost nothing, and would also have to split almost nothing with the buyer's agent?
And she agreed to that?
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> Now that you mention it, I'm not sure I want to employ someone who uses their creative energy for anything except the company's business. What a thuggish company, with such a feudal view of its workers! Hopefully most companies understand that they don't own their employees outright.
I wouldn't ascribe malice. Most companies usually do it because the it's the safest way to avoid a legal fight. The more detailed and convoluted the contract becomes the more expensive and time-consuming it becomes to adjudicate. How do you decide whether a 'side-project' is related or unrelated to the work? It's easy to point out obvious cases. (E.g. "I'm a coder and I design a mini golf course for my buddy") but th…
* At hire time provide a list of "my ip" and "ip from previous employer that may be controversial here"
* At personal project start time, get a document signed from management saying "this is not related to $employer, and does not count as related work"
* At exit time (particularly when there is post employment IP or non-compete) get a document agreeing that "this IP was from the employee to the company, this was not.
It sounds like a bureaucratic mess, but it's like 10 minutes of hassle here and there, and saves a bunch of issue, even in the future if say, the company gets bought out and the new owner has different views.