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Comment by lb1lf | Hacker News Reader

-A former employer nagged me into signing a rather draconian agreement - basically, anything and everything I came up with, be it within their business area or outside it, be it on my time off or whatever, while I was employed by them or for a period of 12 months after I had left them, belonged to them.

I signed it ‘Juul E. Nissen’ (the equivalent of S. Anta Claus’)

Nobody bothered to verify the signature. I wonder how that would have held up in court.

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Signatures are a modern thing. It used to be you 'made your mark' on a document -- many people couldn't write. So the question is, would you perjure yourself when asked "Is this your mark on the contract?". After all, many signatures bear only a slight resemblance to a printed name.

Did they ask you to sign this contract after you had accepted their offer, or after you had already started working for them? Or was it provided as part of the job offer? Did you receive any additional compensation (consideration) for signing this contract?

not sure about the OP's experience, but typically 'all your brain belong to us' forms are presented during the first day orientation, many days after the offer letter is received and accepted.

It came up after I had worked there for years; we were bought up by a multinational whose HR department wasted no time preparing a number of ‘additions’ and ‘clarifications’ to our existing contracts.

(Their) problem in court would have been that such contracts are not enforceable in my jurisdiction; however, my colleagues and I would rather not start off the new business relationship by dragging them to court, so we duly signed (of sorts).

I work under a contract that says my employer claims a non exclusive right to use anything I invent that could be construed as using company resources. It’s not an unfair contract, and I obviously don’t use company resources for anything I do on my own time, but the funny thing is that if they ever decided I had inadvertently used some company resource for some part of a personal project, it wouldn’t matter. I license my personal projects CC0 aka public domain. Everyone has a non exclusive right to use my work!

Could that be considered fraud? They should be able to take at face value that a document that you signed is actually your signature.

Seems a bit odd to expect a business partner to "verify your signature". How could they do that anyway? Compare it to previous documents? You could have changed your signature.

Not saying they should get away with draconian agreements, but the "right" thing to do would be to not sign it.

He could claim he didn't sign it, but I doubt he'd get away with it because the next question would be "why did they take the contract from you, with this signature on it, and the file it under your name, with this signature on it? If you didn't sign and give them this contract, why did you not question why they employed you without (from your perspective) having turned in a signed employment contract?"

No, thats not the right tree to bark up. No one can testify about why someone else did something- that is the "objection! speculation" that you hear.

Im curious how this would actually go, considering it must have happened before.

They can ask you why you would sign it with an alternate signature if you were not intending to honor the contract however. I expect the judge would do everything in his power to rule against you in that case.

I'm also curious about what has happened when people tried this before.

you could always claim duress is the reason why you didn't sign your name.

there is a trick under UCC, which is technical, but totally enforceable in court that does something similar.

no, I'm not going to mention it.

A signature is evidence of an agreement. It is not the only evidence that can be used to prove that an agreement was made.

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