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"It doesn't matter how much R&D was created. That's the role of patents to deal with that thing." I'm beginning to think none of you have ever worked in compan

"It doesn't matter how much R&D was created. That's the role of patents to deal with that thing." I'm beginning to think none of you have ever worked in companies that actually produce IP. First off - that's not what patents are for. Patents protect publicly known information - not trade secrets. And they don't do it very well. There are very few things you can defend with a patent. What companies are concerned with is 'trade secrets' and 'know how' - and it's a serious thing. "Then the burden of proof should lie with the previous company, there shouldn't be any possibility of preemptive clause within the former contract." If you work at DWAVE for 5 years and learn everything you know about Quantum Computing there - and go to Google to work on Quantum Computing - then there is basically a 100% chance that you are passing on 'know how' and 'trade secrets' - otherwise - Google would not hire you. Your comments about customers etc. are irrelevant with respect to IP issues. If you work for ABC corp and they make a 'sales automation tool' - and you go off and build your own 'sales automation tool' - then fine. It's not about IP or trade secrets. You can do as you like. But for other types of things, no way. You work at Nuance on Speech recognition - then you leave and build a nearly identical speech recognition system? That's probably IP theft. There would not be any technology if IP could not be protected in some reasonable way. I'm not suggesting that many of these contracts are crazy - and that there can be absurd limitations and weird corner cases - of course it's very tricky - but companies deserve the right to protect their IP in some manner.

greglindahl 10y ago
Companies protect their IP via NDAs and patents and such, not non-competes. And yes, I have a lot of patents and trade-secrets to my name.
Hondor 10y ago
> If you work for ABC corp and they make a 'sales automation tool' - and you go off and build your own 'sales automation tool' - then fine. It's not about IP or trade secrets. You can do as you like. Unless you have a noncompete clause. That's exactly why they're a problem. You can't develop your professional skills. When you leave, you have to start from scratch in a different industry.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  "Unless you have a noncompete clause. That's exactly why they're a problem. You can't develop your professional skills. When you leave, you have to start from scratch in a different industry." Buddy - I'm saying there should be no 'non compete' clause in that situation. Obviously - there's no basis for it because there is no IP involved. Which is a case of over-aggressive application of these protocols.
flukus 10y ago
> If you work at DWAVE for 5 years and learn everything you know about Quantum Computing there - and go to Google to work on Quantum Computing - then there is basically a 100% chance that you are passing on 'know how' and 'trade secrets' - otherwise - Google would not hire you. That isn't trade secrets, it's experience.
- omnimus 10y ago
  Exactly. The views on this are so twisted in US. People actualy believe that its the company giving away everything. Truth is if youve worked on quantum computers for five years youve generated so much of this know how. Youve invested ideas, energy, time - its you givin away knowledge not company.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    Also, was this that employees first job? Certainly he gained experience somewhere else first. Why should the first company benefit from that? It's the circle of life.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  "That isn't trade secrets, it's experience" No. 100% false. If that information is key to the nature and success of a product, then it's called 'know how' and it's both legally and rationally protectable. You people need to grow up and grasp that fact that once you go to a company and they teach you what they have spent $100 Million dollars on developing, that you cannot walk across the street and spill the beans on 80% of the materiality of that R&D which happens to be such details.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    There's clearly a gray area. Knowledge does get transferred when people move from company to company. If someone developed experience in, say, running retail marketing campaigns for millennials at company X (to remove this discussion from the technical domain) and they take a job at competing company Y, OF COURSE they're bringing over both know how and negative know how developed at their prior employer. That said, it doesn't mean that it's either ethical or necessarily legal for them to go to company Y and immediately do a core dump of every marketing campaign they ran and what the results were. But there's a fuzzy line between doing that and saying "Oh, millennials really respond well to this sort of language, but be careful not to say this."
justinlardinois 10y ago
> I'm beginning to think none of you have ever worked in companies that actually produce IP. All software companies produce intellectual property.
- talmand 10y ago
  My company has IP, I guess I'll never get to work with HTML, CSS, and Javascript ever again if I leave.
alkonaut 10y ago
> but companies deserve the right to protect their IP Sure. What I have in my head isn't the companies IP though, it's my experience. "IP" is often confused with "the collective experience of your employees". IP is physical artifacts such as code, drawings, patents etc. The memory of having written that code is not part of the IP, nor is the capability of doing it again in a fraction of the time.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  "What I have in my head isn't the companies IP though, it's my experience." Again - 100% false. A lot of 'what is in your head' is the IP of the company you worked for. Clearly, you grasp this, because you people seem to accept that NDA's are valid. So - that yo accept and 'NDA' is valid, means you accept that 'what is in your head' can be the property of the company. These 'I'm paid for labour' arguments are naive. You are paid to create outcomes, and to keep information about the company private - indefinitely.
  - talmand 10y ago
    An NDA and a non-compete are not the same thing. What you are describing is an NDA. It is quite possible for someone to change jobs, even in the same industry, and still abide by an NDA.
  - alkonaut 10y ago
    > Again - 100% false. A lot of 'what is in your head' is the IP of the company you worked for. I consider most of it "experience". How would you draw the line between what is "experience" and what is "IP"? > you people seem to accept that NDA's are valid. > 'NDA' is valid, means you accept that 'what is in your head' can be the property of the company Well it rather means that I can't disclose things to certain people at certain times. I accept that e.g. for unreleased products and other secrets. > to keep information about the company private - indefinitely. Not sure what that means? If I work for ABC corp to develop over 10 years some advanced tech for ad targeting, and I have a non-compete that doesn't let me go to google for a year. For that full year they pay me full salary. That is the non-compete. I accept that (only with full salary). While at ABC, I had an NDA. That's cool. After that year I can clean room implement something similar. I might have to avoid making the exact same system I did at ABC corp if there are IP issues such as patents. Note that this IP (patents) is not secret. I don't necessarily agree with software patents of most kinds however. I develop the similar system at google in 1 year. That's what experience does: I take none of the dead ends I did at ABC corp. That's why google can pay me a load of money: I have experience. Is that experience in large part the SAME as ABC corps "IP"? yes. Of course. Do they "own" all of that experience? No. They still have their product. They own that. Google will have a product too, which they own. I wrote both.
raverbashing 10y ago
One thing I suspect (in SW), the strongest the company wants to protect "their IP" the most BS it is usually I've seen people talk with a straight face how they think their company invented the use of IFNDEF/DEFINE for C .h files And parent comment only goes to show how there are cattle that supports barbecues

greglindahl 10y ago

Companies protect their IP via NDAs and patents and such, not non-competes. And yes, I have a lot of patents and trade-secrets to my name.

Hondor 10y ago

> If you work for ABC corp and they make a 'sales automation tool' - and you go off and build your own 'sales automation tool' - then fine. It's not about IP or trade secrets. You can do as you like. Unless you have a noncompete clause. That's exactly why they're a problem. You can't develop your professional skills. When you leave, you have to start from scratch in a different industry.

jomamaxx 10y ago
"Unless you have a noncompete clause. That's exactly why they're a problem. You can't develop your professional skills. When you leave, you have to start from scratch in a different industry." Buddy - I'm saying there should be no 'non compete' clause in that situation. Obviously - there's no basis for it because there is no IP involved. Which is a case of over-aggressive application of these protocols.

flukus 10y ago

> If you work at DWAVE for 5 years and learn everything you know about Quantum Computing there - and go to Google to work on Quantum Computing - then there is basically a 100% chance that you are passing on 'know how' and 'trade secrets' - otherwise - Google would not hire you. That isn't trade secrets, it's experience.

omnimus 10y ago
Exactly. The views on this are so twisted in US. People actualy believe that its the company giving away everything. Truth is if youve worked on quantum computers for five years youve generated so much of this know how. Youve invested ideas, energy, time - its you givin away knowledge not company.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  Also, was this that employees first job? Certainly he gained experience somewhere else first. Why should the first company benefit from that? It's the circle of life.
jomamaxx 10y ago
"That isn't trade secrets, it's experience" No. 100% false. If that information is key to the nature and success of a product, then it's called 'know how' and it's both legally and rationally protectable. You people need to grow up and grasp that fact that once you go to a company and they teach you what they have spent $100 Million dollars on developing, that you cannot walk across the street and spill the beans on 80% of the materiality of that R&D which happens to be such details.
- ghaff 10y ago
  There's clearly a gray area. Knowledge does get transferred when people move from company to company. If someone developed experience in, say, running retail marketing campaigns for millennials at company X (to remove this discussion from the technical domain) and they take a job at competing company Y, OF COURSE they're bringing over both know how and negative know how developed at their prior employer. That said, it doesn't mean that it's either ethical or necessarily legal for them to go to company Y and immediately do a core dump of every marketing campaign they ran and what the results were. But there's a fuzzy line between doing that and saying "Oh, millennials really respond well to this sort of language, but be careful not to say this."

justinlardinois 10y ago

> I'm beginning to think none of you have ever worked in companies that actually produce IP. All software companies produce intellectual property.

talmand 10y ago
My company has IP, I guess I'll never get to work with HTML, CSS, and Javascript ever again if I leave.

alkonaut 10y ago

> but companies deserve the right to protect their IP Sure. What I have in my head isn't the companies IP though, it's my experience. "IP" is often confused with "the collective experience of your employees". IP is physical artifacts such as code, drawings, patents etc. The memory of having written that code is not part of the IP, nor is the capability of doing it again in a fraction of the time.

jomamaxx 10y ago
"What I have in my head isn't the companies IP though, it's my experience." Again - 100% false. A lot of 'what is in your head' is the IP of the company you worked for. Clearly, you grasp this, because you people seem to accept that NDA's are valid. So - that yo accept and 'NDA' is valid, means you accept that 'what is in your head' can be the property of the company. These 'I'm paid for labour' arguments are naive. You are paid to create outcomes, and to keep information about the company private - indefinitely.
- talmand 10y ago
  An NDA and a non-compete are not the same thing. What you are describing is an NDA. It is quite possible for someone to change jobs, even in the same industry, and still abide by an NDA.
- alkonaut 10y ago
  > Again - 100% false. A lot of 'what is in your head' is the IP of the company you worked for. I consider most of it "experience". How would you draw the line between what is "experience" and what is "IP"? > you people seem to accept that NDA's are valid. > 'NDA' is valid, means you accept that 'what is in your head' can be the property of the company Well it rather means that I can't disclose things to certain people at certain times. I accept that e.g. for unreleased products and other secrets. > to keep information about the company private - indefinitely. Not sure what that means? If I work for ABC corp to develop over 10 years some advanced tech for ad targeting, and I have a non-compete that doesn't let me go to google for a year. For that full year they pay me full salary. That is the non-compete. I accept that (only with full salary). While at ABC, I had an NDA. That's cool. After that year I can clean room implement something similar. I might have to avoid making the exact same system I did at ABC corp if there are IP issues such as patents. Note that this IP (patents) is not secret. I don't necessarily agree with software patents of most kinds however. I develop the similar system at google in 1 year. That's what experience does: I take none of the dead ends I did at ABC corp. That's why google can pay me a load of money: I have experience. Is that experience in large part the SAME as ABC corps "IP"? yes. Of course. Do they "own" all of that experience? No. They still have their product. They own that. Google will have a product too, which they own. I wrote both.

raverbashing 10y ago

One thing I suspect (in SW), the strongest the company wants to protect "their IP" the most BS it is usually I've seen people talk with a straight face how they think their company invented the use of IFNDEF/DEFINE for C .h files And parent comment only goes to show how there are cattle that supports barbecues