4 ms·
Please cite relevant statutes or case law. It's pretty easy to write a contract that only assigns copyright to the corporation for works that were created on co
by anaphor 7y ago
Please cite relevant statutes or case law. It's pretty easy to write a contract that only assigns copyright to the corporation for works that were created on company time. That is standard practice for pretty much every job, including non-tech ones.
- FussyZeus 7y agoExcept Google is one of many corporations that exploit passion for the work their employees are doing to get hundreds of extra hours out of them off the clock. You're right, it's very easy for them to say "only work at work" but they don't want to do that, so instead, anything created by employees is their IP.
- vageli 7y agoWhen does company time start and end for a salaried employee? If I'm working on a side project and get paged to look at something for work, does work time start when I look at the alert? Am I on work time if I answer a work email on a work device with my personal laptop open doing side work at 3 am?
- anaphor 7y agoI mean, if it was done on non-Google hardware, off Google property, and using resources that you paid for / own, then I can't see any problems with that. They can still argue that it competes with their core business, but they would have to provide some justification if they wanted to fire you for cause or have the IP assigned to them. I guess they can just terminate you for no reason (I think?), but that's the risk you take.
- shadowgovt 7y agoThe possible need to prove that an employee's work was done on company time (which is a vaguely-defined notion for US salary employees in the era of remote work) or with company hardware is a huge hassle for the employer, which can probably shed light on why they'd use blanket assume-ownership-of-copyright agreements, so long as employees are willing to sign such agreements.