3 ms·
If your side-project is at all related to your day job, this most likely runs afoul of your employment agreement and IP considerations. Typically, your employer
by aardvark291 8y ago
If your side-project is at all related to your day job, this most likely runs afoul of your employment agreement and IP considerations. Typically, your employer claims ownership of all IP you generate that pertains to your work or its business. For example, if you work at Google, I think it's essentially impossible to simultaneously work on any other side project that you wish to commercialize that will not be owned by Google.
- bad_good_guy 8y agoI can't imagine a case like that would ever hold up, unless you were working on company time or machines.
- geofft 8y agoI can't afford as many lawyers as Google can. Do you have examples of cases where a Google-style IP agreement was ruled unenforceable when someone was moonlighting on something that was in the same field of business as some other part of the company (but unrelated to their own day job)?
- riku_iki 8y agoFrom another hand there are thousands of ex-googlers left company to engage in startups, and Google likely doesn't have enough lawyers to go after each of them..
- geofft 8y agoLeft to join/found a startup is different from working simultaneously at both.
- riku_iki 8y agoYes, but Google need some resources to monitor and research who exactly left to found, and who was working simultaneously at both with conflict of company interests.
- aardvark291 8y agoYou're not arguing that it's legal; you're arguing that you're unlikely to get caught. That's different.
- overcast 8y agoBaloney, unless you're using corporate resources to get it done, they don't own work you do outside of working hours. No judge would ever uphold that. There are tons of Google / Facebook / whatever employees that build software outside of work.
- dasmoth 8y agoDepends on the jurisdiction. California is reputed to be relatively side-project friendly in this regard. Other US states less so. Likewise UK (which is a factor in why I’m on the way out of my current gig in a couple of weeks...)
- tokyodude 8y agoThat's not my understanding. At least in California AFAIK the law says exactly what the poster above said which is that the company owns work related their area of business even outside work hours and not on company equipment. I always think of it this way. You're at dinner (ie, off company time). While a dinner you think of a solution for something at work. Do you own that solution? Can you charge the company $$$$$ to sell them this solution you came up with outside company hours? If yes then there's an incentive for you to never think on company time. If no then it seems pretty clear there's a spectrum from clearly related to the company's area of business to absolutely not related to the company's area of business. If you work at Facebook and on the side you design a new IoT coffee maker that's probably on the unrelated side. If you work at Facebook and on the side make a new social networking site probably on the absolutely related side. If you want to be safe rather than wait for a court to decide get it in writing. At least when I was at Google they offered that service. You could bring them the idea and they'd tell you if it was related or not and if not give you a signed contract saying they officially had no interest in your outside project.
- aardvark291 8y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1969979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1969979
- robodale 8y agoWrong. You will have signed an Intellectual Property Assignment Agreement for anything like you mention to be enforceable. My advice: if you want to build something on the side and are presented with a legal doc like I mentioned above...walk away.
- aardvark291 8y ago> You will have signed an Intellectual Property Assignment Agreement for anything like you mention to be enforceable Yes, and signing this agreement is a condition of employment.