Comment by tetrep | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tetrep | Hacker News Reader

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> Your game designer works for a year and invents 7 games. At the end of the year, she sues you, claiming that she owns 4 of them, because those particular games were invented between 5pm and 9am, when she wasn’t on duty.

> ...

> So before you hire this developer, you agree, “hey listen, I know that inventing happens all the time, and it’s impossible to prove whether you invented something while you were sitting in the chair I supplied in the cubicle I supplied or not. I don’t just want to buy your 9:00-5:00 inventions. I want them all, and I’m going to pay you a nice salary to get them all,” and she agrees to that, so now you want to sign something that says that all her inventions belong to the company for as long as she is employed by the company.

Wait, what? Wouldn't the fix for this just to say, "You transfer the rights to any games you give us" (or whatever the legal wording for that is)?

It seems incredibly odd to go from "you gave us a game but kept the IP" to "we own all IP of games you make".

I furrowed my brow at that example, too. He may have been simplifying or misrepresenting reality. I would think it's disingenuous that you're presenting all 7 of those games as projects done on the company time (unless there is something to insinuate you were forced to work off the clock for free--which wouldn't be different than any other kind of work).

Lets say, without notifying my boss, I went on vacation and refactored some company code I maintain, then checked it in when I got back. I can't imagine claiming that as my own unless there were other shady things going on.

I think the standard contract should say something like "I assign copyright of and grant a licence to any patents I own pertinent to every single line of code that I create and give the company".

> Your game designer works for a year and invents 7 games. At the end of the year, she sues you, claiming that she owns 4 of them, because those particular games were invented between 5pm and 9am, when she wasn’t on duty.

That's not what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid that after developing 7 games that belong to my employer, my personal website project that computes tax returns in ethiopia would somehow belong to my employer because

I'm perfectly fine with my employer owning everything related to what I'm employed there to do unless explicitly agreed otherwose

I'm not fine with my employer owning every single piece of "IP" (god I hate that term) that I have created during my employment but outside of work, if it's unrelated to their business. I don't even agree to that even if I have a "standard contract" in which I have stated that they own everything I do. I'm not going to argue over that contract, no one does, and I'm still not ready to give up the ownership of my personal projects.

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