How liberal is your company regarding personal projects?
[1]: https://opensource.google.com/docs/iarc/
Major part of my reasoning to leave. I left with a fair bit of leverage due to an unrelated matter so managed to secure all the rights to my side project on the way out.
Current job - don't compete directly with us and don't let it get in the way of your work and we're cool with whatever.
Specifically, I'd accept wording that included "excludes personal project work done 100% outside of a work context, unless such work is related to a direct work assignment". But a lawyer would have to point out any loopholes in that wording.
In a lot of cases they probably couldn't. The purpose of this sort of clause isn't that they can actually use it to claim truly unrelated work you did on your own time. The main purpose of a clause like this is to ensure that if the work is defensibly related to your job you can't make the argument that the contract left you a loophole.
Everything you work on outside of work is your own property, and we have no real interest in it. Even on work computers, as long as it's not part of a client project, then it's your property.
Honestly, I'm kind of surprised how many companies seemingly don't work like this. I mean, maybe I'm really lucky in that sense, but I never worked for or even interviewed at a company that cared what their employees were doing in their free time.
And if it does, then the business operates a 'first-refusal' policy. In cases where the business has decided to utilise the side-project, this is normally combined with financial compensation in some form (a salary raise, a bonus, something like that).
FYI, I'm in the UK (midlands). I think this is quite a liberal approach compared to most. But it seems to motivate staff to think outside the box in the interests of the business.
I had a discussion and got a clarification on the scope and we agreed that it covered specified things with work applicability, so I'm satisfied now (will start work on the best selling novel and string of number one hits right away!).
It was important it wasn't just based on a vague ill-defined idea of "outside work" because typically a portion of what is clearly work related IP I generate doesn't happen in a formal work situation, yet I understand it as work (and am fine with that) whilst equally there is plenty of non-work IP that is just as clearly in no way work (as it doesn't relate to our line of business).
This does probably not really fit to what we understand as "side projects" but if you are making serious money and invest time in it, you´ll have to talk to your employer.
Employers will most likely do not allow it, if it´s very time consuming (you need to be fit your main job) or very related to your main job (say: freelancing graphic design while working for a design agency).
I found that it really depends on the employer and there is no general rule.
An employer can require you to inform him about side jobs but is legally not allowed to prohibit you from taking a side job unless you work against his interest (eg. negative impact on your performance or competing with your employer).
Any thing I work on is only improving my knowledge for the company itself. I don't think they have any policy that it is theirs. Though most of my work is kept on the Internet and very rarely do I ever have the files I am working on on the computer, and if they are, they are just mock files that have no purpose other than UI.
I have heard of plenty of companies claiming to own your ideas, but unless you directly stole something from your company, like their core code -- in which case, a lot of Google's stuff is open source anyway, so really, how can they claim to own your projects? And if thats the case, than what share of your own idea do you get?
Anyways, unless the company wants to help you market and advertise and sell your product, than they really have no say. But companies will do as they please. They are certainly better off allowing people to be creative. There are plenty of projects I work on that I'm sure my company has no interest in. Would they want to claim something I wrote that encourages swearing and cursing? Yeah.. probably not.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...
TL;DR - companies don't want you to sue them in the future where you claim copyright on their product.
I'm a contractor and I've been asked to sign some work I did over to the company I work for; it's very very clear what "The Software" is in the contract that my client was paying for, why make it so complicated?
"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."
You have the option to specify clearly and record what you paid the games developer for; it's on you as an employer to show this and it's a ridiculous, straw man example. If you cannot prove that the developer did this work solely for you in exchange for salary then maybe you don't deserve to own these games.
Not necessary in California: 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 equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information. http://law.justia.com/codes/california/2011/lab/division-3/2...
There are exceptions of course, major one: you have not compete with your employer.
>> Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer; or
First of, this is not same as not competing with your employer.
"Relate" here is not well-specified. I was told by a lawyer that if something is in the same trademark category (e.g., software), it can be considered "related". So if your work is in the line of the main business of the employer, you are unlikely to be coming up with anything that is not related. Unless your employer makes software, and your side business is making, ahem, burgers or something.
Also from the link:
>> Inventions Made by an Employee
Note the word "inventions" there. It is unclear if this is taken to mean just the things that are inventions (e.g., patentable ideas), or also works of copyright. In other words, if you work for a software company, you create a software side project for image processing, all the source code you write may still be the property of your employer as that source code is a subject of copyright (even in California), though they may not get any inventions encompassed in that source code.
PS: I am not a lawyer, though have read a book or two on this subject.
A company taking copyright of personal projects of it's employees is unheard of around here (Russia).
I've actually encountered this kind of clause in a contract for working as a subcontractor for an american company (they own rights to everything i made during the contract), but when i pointed it out as unacceptable it was removed without any questions (before signing).
So this feels like USA-specific and predatory type of a clause, at least from my perspective.
The basic rule of thumb when seeing stupid clauses like this is 'Someone did something shift, a lawsuit happened and the words "I didn't know I couldn't" came out of the defendant's mouth and that cost/almost cost the plaintiff the case. So now they make it overbroad so you can't claim you didn't know'.
There have been several cases over the years--one of which got several cow-orkers of mine fired--where the "side project" turned into a real company and it turned out to either be based on the companies source code, or created by looking at the companies source code (in one case a competing product, in another case a complementary product).
In some ways it's an "anti-predatory" clause.
I've mostly been subject to it at much larger companies and defense contractors.
It's also something that you can usually get a 'waiver' (or whatever your company calls it) for. Go to your boss, or whomever and get them to put in writing that "Yeah, we know about this, and it's ok with us".
The current place I work has a policy that they own stuff which I create on my business machine and I am free to pursue interests which do not cause a potential conflict of interest or competition.
In my previous organization, it was a simple "we own your ass, home or otherwise and don't you dare engage in a side project without informing us" .
2. "New" side projects may not be covered by such declarations, which are about the past. So if you want to continue some side projects, you should read the language of the agreement carefully, and/or, reach an agreement in writing with them that you are working on the said side projects and this is OK with them.
In most of the big companies is as you've described.
If it's just for an Open Source project, that that's one thing, but if you're also working 10 or 20 hours a week with another company then they (a) need to know that they have to account for that in scheduling and expectations and (b) want to know that you're not working for a competitor and passing inside information.
I had one guy on my team who was working 16 to 24 hours a week at another job, which meant that needed to be careful how I scheduled him (because at the time we didn't have enough work to schedule everyone full time. If we had, well then he'd have to sort that out).