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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

#401

Post by iamacynic »

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…

that's good to know, because when we started up, we completely pilfered all of our licensing, partnership, service level, and disclosure agreements from competitors.

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

#402

Post by thaumasiotes »

btilly wrote: post #191
zekevermillion wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contracts theoretically could be protected by copyright. However, we reuse so much of the functional language that it would be difficult to prove that a given contract is sufficiently transformative to merit protection. One exception is that heavily-annotated firm templates and file memos. I would be more cautious about sharing a detailed, annotated template from a previous employer. Some large firms in fact do requi…

In theory, functionally important language should be uncopyrightable. This is the same world of theory in which software is not subject to copyright...

To be fair, making that distinction would imply that e.g. minified code is uncopyrightable while pretty-printed code with descriptive variable names is subject to copyright.

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

#403

Post by ghurtado »

ambrice wrote: post #397
ghurtado wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think you misunderstand: all work done by an independent contractor is by default "work made for hire" unless explicitly stated otherwise.

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

#404

Post by pdshrader »

andrewfong wrote: post #198
6stringmerc wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's...really something. I do have a bit of a quibble with one of your assertions though: > It would not even be possible to ascertain the original authorship of most form contracts that cross my desk. I highly doubt this statement is true if given Documents X, Y, Z et al are given stringent, professional forensic examination for remnants of markings. Maybe not every single one, sure, but enough in a Universe…

> stringent, professional forensic examination for remnants of markings Don't doubt it's possible, but might be a little trickier than you suspect. My old firm, as a matter of course, installed software on our laptops that stripped all sorts of metadata from outgoing documents. It was actually really annoying since "tracked changes" in MS Word got removed too.

@spinklock - it's the industry standard. My firm does the same (although now it's done through our file management systems instead of through software installed on our laptops).

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

#405

Post by pdshrader »

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…

If you have access to Intelligize through your firm, their product is excellent at parsing and tracing contract provisions in public filings.

Source: Not a representative of Intelligize, but I've used their product quite often at my firm.

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

#406

Post by ambrice »

ghurtado wrote: post #403
ambrice wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think you misunderstand: all work done by an independent contractor is by default "work made for hire" unless explicitly stated otherwise.

Not according to the Copyright Act of 1976:

https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html

A “work made for hire” is— (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire.

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

#408

Post by Spooky23 »

triangleman wrote: post #389
Spooky23 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Wait. So you got a selling agent (Realtor) to sell a property without using the MLS and I am assuming without using buyer's agents? Like just marketing the house directly to the public? 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?

I forgot to add that we agreed to let her be our agent for the home we were buying. We didn't need a quick exit.

This particular realtor focused on building a client base and having the shortest listing time. Her average time on market was 1.2 day.

The 60 day thing was a luxury for her. It's a metric hack that allows her to get more listings and be more selective. People make all sort of wacky deals to spike metrics.

We also ended up buying another of her listings, so she did well.

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

#410

Post by tedmiston »

tedmiston wrote: post #315
guelo wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The seller's agents are indeed salesman but their incentives don't end up quite aligned with the seller's. For example let's say a selling agent is getting 6% on a house listed at $500k. If it sells at $500k he gets $30k, if it sells at $520k he gets $31k. If he were to get a $500k offer it probably isn't worth his time to put in a lot of extra effort to try to get that extra $1k, but to you that extra $19k is a lot…

The authors of Freakonomics wrote a whole chapter along these lines about realtor distinctives.

disincentives (autocorrect)
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