Something I've seen a few times is a disclosure mechanism that allows you to declare any side projects that you're working on in your own time and carve those o

Something I've seen a few times is a disclosure mechanism that allows you to declare any side projects that you're working on in your own time and carve those out from the IP assignment rights usually found within NDAs. Now, you can argue that it's not your employer's business what you do off the clock, but it at least provides a way to protect yourself from falling foul of the agreement and having the company later claim ownership of your work. The key though is to ensure that you don't do any personal work on a company laptop - I believe once you do that all bets are off.