Ask HN: IP, employment contracts and side projects | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: IP, employment contracts and side projects

7 pointsnobuwa7 comments

I'm employed at xxx big IT consulting company. I was hired out of college as an "associate project manager" last year, but have never been given any projects. I work less than 5 hours a week for a full-time salary. I would like to start a niche website on the side, which will produce revenue from google ads. This site will not be in any way related to my employer's buisiness, or any project I've been associated with through my day job.

What should I be considering given that I signed a fairly restrictive contract when I started this job? How standard for the industry is the contract I signed? Does my employer really own all the IP I produce while on salary? Will I have to quit my job to start this website? Is this a cut and dry legal issue or does it also have to do w/ my company's history of litigation on past similar issues?

And is there a differentiation between my for-profit idea, and any other side projects I do which are free and open source?

Thats a lot of questions.... thanks in advance.

By and large it doesn't matter what the contract says, if they don't like what you're doing they may just sue you anyway. What the contract says will affect the outcome of the court case, but that doesn't matter, in the large scheme of things once you're into the realm of your employer suing you you've lost already.

Yeah, I realize that if litigation starts, it means, I lose, no matter what the outcome. I would need to make sure to avoid this at all costs... either by avioding the issue of the contract altogether or by hoping that they wouldn't find the site and put 2 + 2 together. (I think that no matter what this seems likely -it won't be a google killer or anything, if the company found out about it at all it would probably be random)

It says.... any and all work created by me... while employed... will be owned by XXX company....

Is that the clause I should be looking at? It doesn't seem like there are any explicit exceptions to this written into the contract.

I'd recommend you talk to a lawyer that is familiar with employment contract law in your area. My experience has been that companies will put unenforcable restrictions in contracts because they know 99% of people will never check if the restriction can be enforced. It doesn't cost the company anything to add the clause but they benifit from it anyway.

yeah, that was the main gist of my question: What makes such a clause enforceable or unenforceable? Is that speaking in terms of legality, or that it's simply impractical to do so?

I would really like to hear from some other HNers on this: Are you already well aware of the ramifications of the contract you signed before you begin work on side projects, (and maybe even demanded changes to a contract before you signed) or do you forge ahead w/ the knowledge that the "any and all" clause (or whatever) is unenforceable? - this assumes you are not violating any non-competes -it's just a question of IP.....

It seems unlikely to me that every engineer w/ side projects hires a lawyer to go through his/her employment contract before they sign it.... What's best practice when dealing w/ a contract both before you sign it?

Just make it anonymous or use a fake person. May be you can register everything(domain name,trademark) on your wife or you cat. Also you can join an open source project.It's your life, by the way. It cann't belong to your company

A lot of it depends on the actual contract you signed. I would take a look at that to start off. Maybe post your findings back here if you feel open.

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