6 ms·

This is just putting into a contract what ought to be considered normal and reasonable defaults. I don't think they deserve special praise for it, rather compa

This is just putting into a contract what ought to be considered normal and reasonable defaults. I don't think they deserve special praise for it, rather companies that don't do this deserve criticism. Whenever I've encountered overly grasping IP clauses in contracts I've always had them re-written so they only cover work which is done during working hours or related to <core_business>. No employer has ever objected to this, they usually have just been advised by lawyers to be ultra aggressive by default. One (English) employer struck the whole clause on the basis that copyright law covered them sufficiently anyway as by default works created "in the course of employment" belonged to the employer.

falcolas 10y ago
> No employer has ever objected to this I've not had this luck, personally. They are always willing to forgo the job offer just to ensure that everyone has the same contracts. I'm guessing that it's going to be a size of business issue. And the IP assignment clauses are, for the most part, getting worse and worse; my current one extends the assignment to a year after termination, voluntary or not.
- brazzledazzle 10y ago
  Wouldn't that keep you from being employed for a year after termination? If so, I hope a year's worth of severance is part of your contract.
  - falcolas 10y ago
    It could, yes. And no, it wasn't. However, I was laid off at the time and needed the job, so my bargaining power was minimal.
    - brazzledazzle 10y ago
      Yikes. Sorry to hear that.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  Same here. In the past, I've tried negotiating the boilerplate IP assignment agreements tied to a new job and, in every single case/company, I was contacted by legal with a very clear demand to "sign it unmodified or GTFO". For you Captains of Industry who are somehow able to negotiate your employment agreements, congratulations on having that opportunity--but I think that situation must not be very common.
  - darpa_escapee 10y ago
    It's a sign the pool of potential employees is large enough that concessions don't have to be made at negotiations. This is why we have unions.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
> I don't think they deserve special praise for it, rather companies that don't do this deserve criticism. Just like you don't train a dog with punishment but with rewards, it seems like a good idea to reward companies for doing the right thing. Plus, criticism is empirically proven to have mostly zero impact on businesses, so why not try the other way?
dopamean 10y ago
You and I have had very different experiences with this. I've lost offers over simply questioning those clauses.
- danielweber 10y ago
  I've always been taken seriously when raising issues with contracts. Sometimes "taken seriously" means they scratch something out. Sometimes "taken seriously" means they spend 3 days talking at me about why I should sign it, because everyone else has.
VLM 10y ago
I'm not a lawyer so this isn't legal advice but that's very interesting about English law, because in the USA employees have the "in the course of employment" as you state but USA independent contractors retain copyright unless they assign it as part of their contract, so about 99% of contracts have a clause to assign ownership and copyright to the client. Also in the USA putting language like "employment" in a contract is like asking the IRS to please audit you for faking a 1099 relationship while being in a W-2 relationship, which might also be a USA thing. I can imagine a tax system could be created where the local equivalent of W2 vs 1099 has no financial impact on the government (perhaps via most funding being from VAT?) therefore the local equivalent of the IRS simply wouldn't care if you LARP as a contractor or employee while actually being the other. Is that just in England or is that the norm in the whole UK or even former commonwealth like Canada? I've never had a Canadian client so I donno. I would imagine simple rule changes like that would have interesting effects on the whole employee vs contractor relationship.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  >because in the USA employees have the "in the course of employment" as you state but USA independent contractors retain copyright unless they assign it as part of their contract, so about 99% of contracts have a clause to assign ownership and copyright to the client. I'm not a lawyer either but this is not true in the US afaik. "Works made for hire" are automatically copyrighted by the hirer, not the contractor. Copyright assignment clauses in contracts exist to remove any potential ambiguity over whether anything supplied to the hirer is technically "specially ordered or commissioned" or otherwise legally qualified as a "work made for hire". It's to prevent situations where someone claims "Well, I actually did that important part of the work without billing for it, so I've retained the copyright and if you use it, I'll sue you." (I've actually had a contractor tell me this before!) See this circulation from the Copyright Office for more discussion. [0] [PDF] [0] https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf
  - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
    Actually, it's the opposite. Works done by independent contractors are only works for hire if they fall into a narrow range of categories and are explicitly agreed to be a work for hire. If you want copyright of contracted work, you should have the contractor explicitly assign copyright to you. From that circulation, > A work created by an independent contractor can be a work made for hire only if (a) it falls within one of the nine categories of works listed in part 2 above and (b) there is a written agreement between parties specifying that the work is a work made for hire. The nine categories are > as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas

falcolas 10y ago

> No employer has ever objected to this I've not had this luck, personally. They are always willing to forgo the job offer just to ensure that everyone has the same contracts. I'm guessing that it's going to be a size of business issue. And the IP assignment clauses are, for the most part, getting worse and worse; my current one extends the assignment to a year after termination, voluntary or not.

brazzledazzle 10y ago
Wouldn't that keep you from being employed for a year after termination? If so, I hope a year's worth of severance is part of your contract.
- falcolas 10y ago
  It could, yes. And no, it wasn't. However, I was laid off at the time and needed the job, so my bargaining power was minimal.
  - brazzledazzle 10y ago
    Yikes. Sorry to hear that.
ryandrake 10y ago
Same here. In the past, I've tried negotiating the boilerplate IP assignment agreements tied to a new job and, in every single case/company, I was contacted by legal with a very clear demand to "sign it unmodified or GTFO". For you Captains of Industry who are somehow able to negotiate your employment agreements, congratulations on having that opportunity--but I think that situation must not be very common.
- darpa_escapee 10y ago
  It's a sign the pool of potential employees is large enough that concessions don't have to be made at negotiations. This is why we have unions.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

> I don't think they deserve special praise for it, rather companies that don't do this deserve criticism. Just like you don't train a dog with punishment but with rewards, it seems like a good idea to reward companies for doing the right thing. Plus, criticism is empirically proven to have mostly zero impact on businesses, so why not try the other way?

dopamean 10y ago

You and I have had very different experiences with this. I've lost offers over simply questioning those clauses.

danielweber 10y ago
I've always been taken seriously when raising issues with contracts. Sometimes "taken seriously" means they scratch something out. Sometimes "taken seriously" means they spend 3 days talking at me about why I should sign it, because everyone else has.

VLM 10y ago

I'm not a lawyer so this isn't legal advice but that's very interesting about English law, because in the USA employees have the "in the course of employment" as you state but USA independent contractors retain copyright unless they assign it as part of their contract, so about 99% of contracts have a clause to assign ownership and copyright to the client. Also in the USA putting language like "employment" in a contract is like asking the IRS to please audit you for faking a 1099 relationship while being in a W-2 relationship, which might also be a USA thing. I can imagine a tax system could be created where the local equivalent of W2 vs 1099 has no financial impact on the government (perhaps via most funding being from VAT?) therefore the local equivalent of the IRS simply wouldn't care if you LARP as a contractor or employee while actually being the other. Is that just in England or is that the norm in the whole UK or even former commonwealth like Canada? I've never had a Canadian client so I donno. I would imagine simple rule changes like that would have interesting effects on the whole employee vs contractor relationship.

cookiecaper 10y ago
>because in the USA employees have the "in the course of employment" as you state but USA independent contractors retain copyright unless they assign it as part of their contract, so about 99% of contracts have a clause to assign ownership and copyright to the client. I'm not a lawyer either but this is not true in the US afaik. "Works made for hire" are automatically copyrighted by the hirer, not the contractor. Copyright assignment clauses in contracts exist to remove any potential ambiguity over whether anything supplied to the hirer is technically "specially ordered or commissioned" or otherwise legally qualified as a "work made for hire". It's to prevent situations where someone claims "Well, I actually did that important part of the work without billing for it, so I've retained the copyright and if you use it, I'll sue you." (I've actually had a contractor tell me this before!) See this circulation from the Copyright Office for more discussion. [0] [PDF] [0] https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago
  Actually, it's the opposite. Works done by independent contractors are only works for hire if they fall into a narrow range of categories and are explicitly agreed to be a work for hire. If you want copyright of contracted work, you should have the contractor explicitly assign copyright to you. From that circulation, > A work created by an independent contractor can be a work made for hire only if (a) it falls within one of the nine categories of works listed in part 2 above and (b) there is a written agreement between parties specifying that the work is a work made for hire. The nine categories are > as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas