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Comment by olliej | Hacker News Reader

The standard employment contract in us tech is basically: if you do it on company time, or use company property, equipment, or anything paid for by the company it belongs to them - you would almost certainly be in breach of contract if you refused to disclose.

Now even if you didn’t use any company resources, most contracts provide at the very least the right for your company to use any IP you develop, even in your off time, even without any of their resources. Your contract in all likelihood would give them actual ownership of the IP.

You could choose not to tell them about this IP, and I believe you would be fine, as long as you never used or published it - even after termination of employment - because not being required to disclose the IP does not change ownership - it belongs to the company, even if the company does not know about it.

Source: going over job offers+contracts with a lawyer

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I am not a lawyer... however From my personal experience I do not think that is accurate depending upon the state. For instance, blanket IP assignment clauses are not valid in CA and many other states.

Software is far too broad a field for an employer to claim ownership of all of your software code and inventions. and so not familiar with the totality of case law, but I think software copyright and IP claims over employee's free time activities have to be very specific.

Example for some states, such as CA: If your job is developing computer vision algorithms for self-driving cars... your employer can probably claim ownership over your out-of-work inventions for car computer vision stuff. But they probably could not claim ownership for computer vision algorithms you develop for detecting counterfeit money. They definitely would not own a video game you develop or telescope control software you write, etc. unless there are specific contract clauses cover software in these domains.

You can hash out the extent of IP claims [and non-compete concerns] with your employer. I would encourage folks to protect your creative freedom and limit the scope of your employers IP claims to specific technical domains. In many states, the law is already on your side but it is easier if the employment IP domain is specific.

> on company time, or use company property, equipment, or anything paid for by the company

Mine have also said "relating to the company's business" which I imagine (IANAL) can make a lot of programming projects difficult, and I guess might make a lot of non-programming hobbies difficult if you work for a BigCo -- creative media, "things on the internet" etc etc. And not a line you want to even walk close to IMO with companies of that size.

> "relating to the company's business"

The company I work for also has this. The company is a big entertainment conglomerate. I'm unclear what businesses the company is not in; but most of the things I do in my spare time include--songwriting, book publishing, blog writing--could classify as things the company also does.

My `exclusion` clause was over 1 page long and I spent quite a bit of money on a lawyer to put it together.

That doesn't work for large corporations: Imagine working for Sony -- they makes films, games, filming equipment, game consoles, cameras, flash memory, cellphones, financial services, ....

Where would you work if you had skills that led you to be working at Sony in the first place?

Getting legalistic about this would only lead to an even worse outcome than reducing compensation. Getting legalistic is from the beatings will continue until morale improves management school. Instead, management needs to understand that the engineer has a point.

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