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Comment by maxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

When I first learned about this type of contract I couldn’t even believe the concept. How can anybody think it’s ok that a company can claim and kind of ownership over things an employee does in his free time? I have signed up for 40 hours a week and not for being fully owned by the company.

What happens if you work another job and invent things there? Do the companies own each other’s stuff?

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There is often a clause which warrants that you have no conflicting obligations, though if you make a habit of signing these there likely is a conflict. The real solution is to severely limit these terms to reasonable scope. Some are written to be absurdly over-broad.

I like to frame it in terms of reputation risk to the company. If they own the contents of people's creative hobbies outside of work then I am happy to put "Copyright $COMPANY" in big letters on my amateur porn website... Surprisingly few companies have thought about it that way.

So would you assume you can work 40 hr and trade secrets from your employer as a side hustle, just because it's not happening within the work time?

You can do work on the side without disclosing your employers trade secrets, I would hope. There is nothing mysterious about yet another CRUD web application. Besides, confidentiality is covered separately and an NDA can stand on its own.

I suspect employers love restricting your right to have a side hustle so that they absolutely totally own you. If you have no other means of income besides your job they can lean on you pretty hard and there isn't much you can do about it if you like having a roof over your head.

You're presumably already bound to confidentiality.

If someone wants to trade their employer's secrets, there are MUCH easier ways to do so than creating their own side business. This looks like a straw-man argument.

This is not about trade secrets.

Are those contract clauses limited to trade secrets?

They often are not limited. In essence the company claims it owns all your creative output while you are employed.

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