3 ms·

I think your reaction here is similar to how people reacted to the headline that a woman sued her 5 year old nephew for accidentally breaking her arm. She was a

I think your reaction here is similar to how people reacted to the headline that a woman sued her 5 year old nephew for accidentally breaking her arm. She was actually suing the parent's home owners insurance policy because the policy is supposed to cover these kinds of accidents. The insurance company didn't want to pay out though, so they spun the story to a news broadcaster in an effort to shame her into dropping the claim. Most cases where an employer claims ownership of something an engineer did on their own time, it's because the engineer decided to create a competing product and used information or other ip they only had access to as an employee. The guy trying to sell his competing product doesn't want to acknowledge that they've violated a non-compete or NDA they signed, so they publicly claim their employer is just being a bunch of greedy bastards. When you dig into known cases of employers claiming ownership of an employees outside work there are cases where they worked on it before they joined, but those are outliers, and having initial work from before joining doesn't mean that later work hasn't infringed on the employers existing IP. This topic is often complicated, but the realistic answer is that you should always tell your employer that you've started working on something and have it acknowledged as yours way before any valuable IP is created. Not doing so isn't just irresponsible, it's a known business pattern that results in failure. You should ideally tell them before you've even answered the question of how you intend to do it. Nobody is going to steal a vague idea, so this just eliminates the possible argument later. A lack of ability to trust is a strong indicator of eventual failure of the project anyway, so there simply isn't a reason to avoid doing it.

AgentME 7y ago
The cases that make it to court are often the ones where the employee was in the wrong, but cases that make it to court aren't the only thing to judge these policies by. If the policies cause a chilling effect where people who join give up on contributing to outside projects (as the OP twitter thread and multiple others from the author talk about), then it's valid to criticize the policy for that. The cases that make it to court are more likely to have the employee be in the wrong because they're selected from the subgroup of cases where the employee went against the policy instead of quitting outside contributions.
danShumway 7y ago
This isn't a bad argument, but it doesn't match up with the experience that OP had in the Twitter thread. I don't see the point in arguing about what most theoretical cases are when we can instead talk about the actual case that actually happened here. It's difficult to argue that OP stole anything, and they weren't competing with Google, and OP is saying that they didn't use company resources to build anything. Unless your claim is that OP actually did something wrong, the rest of it a little too theoretical for me. I've written this elsewhere, but if obvious abuses were all that companies cared about, the terms wouldn't be written so broadly as to cover everything. A contract is not the place to put an egregious term and then say, "don't worry, we won't enforce it." Treat contracts like they will be enforced. In particular, we've seen this pattern with arbitration agreements. How many women signed Google's arbitration agreements when they joined under the (false) assumption that, "of course for something serious like sexual abuse, Google wouldn't enforce that"? > you should always tell your employer that you've started working on something and have it acknowledged as yours way before any valuable IP is created I do heavily agree with you on this. Don't do what OP did and just ignore the terms, be up front about what you're doing. It just removes doubt. And don't be afraid to walk away from a company if they won't negotiate on this kind of stuff. You want to be in a trusting relationship with your employer.
smsm42 7y ago
I get your point, and if the parent's argument was "but the situation is not that they do it on their own time, but that they violate NDAs etc." then it'd be a solid argument. But the parent argues that it's completely normal for a company to claim ownership on 100% of employee's life and intellectual output, regardless of NDAs and IPs, and that Google has to be praised for permitting you to keep your intellectual output to yourself, if you ask extra nice. > so there simply isn't a reason to avoid doing it. Well, one of the reasons would be what I do outside of work is not my employer's effing business. Of course, if I am taking stuff from work, it makes sense to tell my employer - e.g., if I use company's car to move my furniture, I'd better clear it with my boss, same goes for IP. But if I use my own car to move my own furniture, why would I need to tell my boss about it, even if I use the company car when they are paying me? I mean, I might get a paper just to cover my ass, but that's rather a testament to the state of litigiousness and ridiculousness of our society, not a proper way to do things.

AgentME 7y ago

The cases that make it to court are often the ones where the employee was in the wrong, but cases that make it to court aren't the only thing to judge these policies by. If the policies cause a chilling effect where people who join give up on contributing to outside projects (as the OP twitter thread and multiple others from the author talk about), then it's valid to criticize the policy for that. The cases that make it to court are more likely to have the employee be in the wrong because they're selected from the subgroup of cases where the employee went against the policy instead of quitting outside contributions.

danShumway 7y ago

This isn't a bad argument, but it doesn't match up with the experience that OP had in the Twitter thread. I don't see the point in arguing about what most theoretical cases are when we can instead talk about the actual case that actually happened here. It's difficult to argue that OP stole anything, and they weren't competing with Google, and OP is saying that they didn't use company resources to build anything. Unless your claim is that OP actually did something wrong, the rest of it a little too theoretical for me. I've written this elsewhere, but if obvious abuses were all that companies cared about, the terms wouldn't be written so broadly as to cover everything. A contract is not the place to put an egregious term and then say, "don't worry, we won't enforce it." Treat contracts like they will be enforced. In particular, we've seen this pattern with arbitration agreements. How many women signed Google's arbitration agreements when they joined under the (false) assumption that, "of course for something serious like sexual abuse, Google wouldn't enforce that"? > you should always tell your employer that you've started working on something and have it acknowledged as yours way before any valuable IP is created I do heavily agree with you on this. Don't do what OP did and just ignore the terms, be up front about what you're doing. It just removes doubt. And don't be afraid to walk away from a company if they won't negotiate on this kind of stuff. You want to be in a trusting relationship with your employer.

smsm42 7y ago

I get your point, and if the parent's argument was "but the situation is not that they do it on their own time, but that they violate NDAs etc." then it'd be a solid argument. But the parent argues that it's completely normal for a company to claim ownership on 100% of employee's life and intellectual output, regardless of NDAs and IPs, and that Google has to be praised for permitting you to keep your intellectual output to yourself, if you ask extra nice. > so there simply isn't a reason to avoid doing it. Well, one of the reasons would be what I do outside of work is not my employer's effing business. Of course, if I am taking stuff from work, it makes sense to tell my employer - e.g., if I use company's car to move my furniture, I'd better clear it with my boss, same goes for IP. But if I use my own car to move my own furniture, why would I need to tell my boss about it, even if I use the company car when they are paying me? I mean, I might get a paper just to cover my ass, but that's rather a testament to the state of litigiousness and ridiculousness of our society, not a proper way to do things.