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GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

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Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#391

Post by AnneDev »

braythwayt wrote: post #276

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…

I found myself in a similar situation with a company I worked for. If I didn't know any better, we interviewed at the same place.

I worked for a company for six months before we decided to renegotiate our contract. Thinking back on it, they offered me a few days of extra PTO but like any good business, they used it as an opportunity to sneak a few of these IP clauses in. (and a few other clauses).

It literally said what you're saying: anything that the employee creates or invents, in any field (competing or not) and at any time belongs to the company.

I had a hard discussion with my employer about this clause. It was one of my first jobs so I was pretty frightened. I also had a pretty awesome blog and some open source work. One of my open source projects was a Wordpress theme boilerplate (I was at a WP shop). I worked on it for weeks, trying to get it right, trying to use it to quickly generate new themes. I worked on it in my spare time, never during work. And I worked on it on my own equipment.

I was really proud of it (and still use it today) and got a lot of great feedback on it in the community.

So imagine having that discussion and knowing there is already something that they could claim their rights to.

I asked my boss directly about my theme.

  > You used your experience from your job. We SHOULD own the rights to it and use it. What if we wanted to sell it and make a business out of selling Wordpress themes based on that boilerplate? We have a right to that theme.
I was taken aback. I asked about my technical blog:

  > We reserve the right but we would most likely not exercise unless it would really benefit the company.
I asked about my sci-fi book.

  > Yes, that does fall under the IP clause but why would we want your sci-fi book?
I asked about how that would conflict with my freelancing work (that was my stipulation on the original contract):

  > You should not be devoting any energy to anyone else. If you're working, you should be working on our projects. You're wasting mental energy on other work. If you can work extra hours freelancing, you can surely work extra hours for this job.
I asked how they can justify that kind of reach with IP and otherwise:

  > It's industry standard. Do you think Google lets their employees keep IP to the things they make? Of course not, that would bankrupt them. And Facebook? Or any other tech companies?
Lastly, I noticed a non-compete clause that stated:

  > You may not work for any possible competitor that may reach any field that we have ventured into or may venture into within a 40 mile radius of the company. This includes tech, marketing, sales, etc. for the next two years.
I asked my boss WTF because that covers my entire field of work and pretty much the entire city. I'd have to move or work somewhere completely different:

  > Well, it's a pretty big city! And anyways, it's industry standard. You'll find the same clause at Google.
I delayed signing for a couple of months, got my resignation ready and got fired a couple of days before handing it in with some severance. Never signed anything about IP and I bought my work laptop out in case they try to pull some shit.

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#392

Post by ghurtado »

kcorbitt wrote: post #373
ghurtado wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to respect him, but that post is so wrong on so many counts regarding US IP law and "work for hire" stipulations that I couldn't get myself to finish reading even half of it. "be careful before taking legal advice from the Internet." - Indeed, Joel. Indeed.

Your critique would be much more useful if you explained what he's wrong about. As someone who has done a small amount of contract work in my career, his summary broadly matches my personal understanding.

Fair point.

I will point a couple:

- He says that contractors "by default" own the IP of the work they do for their employers. This is actually exactly the opposite: "work for hire" means that the employer owns the IP by default: http://contently.net/2013/07/09/find-work/work-made-for-hire...

- He glosses over / minimizes the fact that most of these "invention assignment" clauses are doomed in a court of law more often than not (even ignoring the states that outright prohibit them) if they do not fall within the scope of employment (sorry, I don't have a reference here, but I have heard of many such cases being thrown out in court)

As a business owner, he comes across as having a very clear agenda which is at odds with the reality of the law and the actual outcomes of these cases in court.

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#393

Post by weka »

superbatfish wrote: post #126

Look, this is nice for github employees, but it's worth noting that this is not an easy decision for all companies to make. We (developers) aren't like factory workers cranking out widgets by the hour. We're paid to think deeply about challenging problems. For me, that means chewing on a problem for a long time, often when I'm not at work. Honestly, when a problem is challenging, I can't get it out of my mind. I'm th…

> We're paid to think deeply about challenging problems.

Some are; some aren't. Some are working on CRUD apps.

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#394

Post by rpedela »

matthewmcg wrote: post #137

I work at a large law firm that represents a lot of software companies. Our standard employee agreement forms have the usual default (company owns everything you create with its resources or that relates to the scope of your employment). This default has always amused me because lawyers never sign these kinds of agreements with their own law firms . We spend most of our time writing contracts, memos, and other bits o…

I am the founder of Datalanche, a search engine for SEC filings [1]. We have spent a lot of time text processing filings and I would be happy to discuss all the tools and gotchas. Unfortunately it is a longer conversation than what makes sense in an HN comment. If you would like to discuss, please contact me at rpedela@datalanche.com.

1. https://www.datalanche.com

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#395

Post by pklausler »

braythwayt wrote: post #276

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…

s/straightened/straitened/

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#396

Post by zeptomu »

latkin wrote: post #302
greggman wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is every time I see this law referred to people seem to have only read the first clause, not the following clauses > 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 equi…

I think you are missing my point. Obviously if you work on projects related to your employer's business that is a conflict, even when executed in a clean room. The question is, assuming all else is above board (totally unrelated to employer's business, on your own equipment, on your own time...), can you get nailed by eating a bag of work-provided Cheetos while hacking on your project?

> [...] an you get nailed by eating a bag of work-provided Cheetos while hacking on your project?

I doubt it, but it is not the important point.

> Obviously if you work on projects related to your employer's business that is a conflict [...]

It is not obvious I think. If one interprets this rigorous it would be impossible to work on any kind of low-level, tooling or infrastructure software, as it might be used indirectly by your company (or its competitors), so there is a conflict. IANAL.

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#397

Post by ambrice »

ghurtado wrote: post #392
kcorbitt wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your critique would be much more useful if you explained what he's wrong about. As someone who has done a small amount of contract work in my career, his summary broadly matches my personal understanding.

Fair point. I will point a couple: - He says that contractors "by default" own the IP of the work they do for their employers. This is actually exactly the opposite: "work for hire" means that the employer owns the IP by default: http://contently.net/2013/07/09/find-work/work-made-for-hire... - He glosses over / minimizes the fact that most of these "invention assignment" clauses are doomed in a court of law more oft…

That link and Joel seem to agree. By default the contractor owns the IP, unless the contract contains the legal phrase "work made for hire." Maybe you should have kept reading?

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#398

Post by lettergram »

avn2109 wrote: post #309
mahyarm wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 3% that the seller 'pays' for is really yourself paying for it. You could probably negotiate that fee away if you didnt have a realtor on your side for example

>> "Because I am the buyer I had to pay her nothing... the seller pays..." This is literally the second most breathtakingly naive comment I've ever read on the internet.

As I pointed out in a seperate comment...

If I am willing to pay Y for an item, regardless of who is involved in the transaction then it doesn't matter if a percentage is taken. i.e. if Y = Y x 0.97 + Y x 0.03, who cares? Now you might say I could have negotiated that 3% off, and I'd argue that's probably not true.

I seriously lowballed the builder on the sale, the only reason I think I got it was the relationship the builder had with the realtor. The builder has incentive to give a discount to a realtor, as he has 50 other houses he has to sell. She also has an incentive because the quicker she can get me to buy a house, the less she has to show, i.e. the more she makes per hour.

All of this isn't exactly explicit, but in my case, the realtor and I discussed this. It was actually quite refreshing and definitely worked in my benefit as I picked up my house for around 10%+ less than the people around me. The realtor was similarly happy because I only took around a day of her time, and the builder was happy because he was in serious need of cash flow.

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#399

Post by paulddraper »

flamedoge wrote: post #364
paulddraper wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just use flat-fee agent in Utah. $95. Same experience. If you want an industry ripe for disruption, consumer real estate is HUGE. Got a couple start ups in my area trying to do that.

area where it concerns overhead due to law seems does seem ripe for disruption. But my concern is that this isn't a technical challenge, but rather political/legal one.

I mean that the buying/selling process is rather backward in technology and there's a lot of misunderstanding. The difficulties are less political and more inertial.

A primarily digital brokerage would be (is) a huge improvement.

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#400

Post by tigershark »

nso wrote: post #256
lsaferite wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love those protections personally, but I have no such luck.

It's minimum requirement for a hire contract in Norway. 3 months mutual notification, and only in a few cases can you be fired on spot without compensation (theft and such). You can contractually increase the notification time from the baseline, but not decrease. Makes for happy and productive workers, and also benefits companies who don't have to worry about loosing their best worker without notice.

3 months notice period seems a very bad deal to me. If you want to change job you simply cannot because no one would wait for 3 months, unless you are at executive level.
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