Hacker News Reader

Comment by fzeroracer | Hacker News Reader

Please please please P L E A S E keep in mind that a lot of developers literally cannot work on many projects in their free time because the company they work for owns everything they do on and off company time.

Even contributing to open source efforts can become an issue because you're expected to ask for permission first and it can become a sticky legal issue of ownership. Companies expect and want people to work on personal projects but then don't give ownership of said projects to the developer.

View on HN

In 25 years of signing employment agreements, I've never seen one that said, "the company ... owns everything they do on and off company time." Yes, if you're working on a Foo and you write a Foo on your own time, you'll have an issue.

Do you have any specific lawsuits in mind?

It doesn't even have to be lawsuits - I've seen cease and desist letters be sent in the past. Not everyone has the financial resources to hire on lawyers to go through with a lawsuit.

Well, the thing is, you can get a cease and desist for just about anything, whether there's justification for it or not. Anyone can do anything to you, if you can't or won't call them on it. That's why I wanted to see legal precedents.

If the Nginx thing were happening in the US, I know which side I'd put my bets on. And I'd really like it, one way or another, because we wouldn't need to have this conversation.

That's illegal in California, but in Canada you will see things like that come up, even to the extent of saying the company owns anything you think of while employed there.

My last job had that clause in the contract. I was actually discussing with a co-worker on doing a game jam thing together outside of work and that got shut down because we didn't want to get into legal issues.

The fact that they'd likely lose the lawsuit doesn't matter, it's the threat of legal action which we couldn't afford in the first place. Mind you, this was a company that had absolutely nothing to do with video games too.

Every job i've had has had something to this extent in the contract.

In California it is illegal. If you work in trendy software companies, startups, etc - it probably isn't common because so many people have Githubs.

As a embedded software engineer, I've had specific language claiming rights to everything (one even called out "songs or other copyrightable works") I do while employed at the company at 4/4 of my post-college jobs.

All tech company jobs I’ve had (in California) had IP assignment clauses. They are not illegal. CA companies can claim ownership of IP produced by employees on their own time and equipment if it “Relate[s] 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”

This is a huge loophole for larger companies who can argue that everything you do may relate to their future business.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21754139

The challenge is that your Googles and Microsofts don't just make Foos. They make Foos, Bars, Widgets, Whatsits, and everything else. When you're building an all-encompassing tech ecosystem, nearly anything your employees do on their own time could be arguably construed as related to the business.

I turned down a job in Oregon this year because they wanted me to sign an IP assignment clause to that effect and refused to budge when I asked them to remove it.

Not only do some companies require you to sign those agreements, I worked for one where they gave one to you after years of employment* and you had to sign if you wanted to continue to be employed. Lawsuits are spectacularly beside the point. You don't say to your spouse and kids "they fired me today, but I'm sure in ten years or so we'll win the lawsuit!"

*if this sounds implausible, it might have been at the time that a spinoff was happening and employees were being "technically" rehired by the new entity. I don't remember for sure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com