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Comment by Xylakant | Hacker News Reader

Germany has an entire law around this which came into force 1957: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/arbnerfg/__49.html

Many work contracts don't have clauses for inventions related to your field of employment because there's no ambiguity.

Most patches would not fall under the law, but entire libaries or novel approaches might. (basically anything patent-worthy)

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IIUC this governs patentable inventions, not copyright.

No, it also covers technical improvements that are not patentable: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/arbnerfg/__3.html

That's just defining the term. AFAICT the law only says that an employee has a right to receive fair compensation for a technical improvement in some cases. It explicitly says that apart from that, procedures covering technical improvements are a matter of contracts: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/arbnerfg/__20.html

This is the point I think the tweeter and a lot of commenters on here miss.

In the EU all those laws are part of the statutory employment law /eu directives and not in an individuals contract - so employees don't ever know about that unless they know about employment law.

> so employees don't ever know about that unless they know about employment law.

I'd really recommend all employees to read up at least on the generics of employment law. No need to read up on the edge cases, but the general law is pretty clear and not too long.

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