4 ms·

I worked for a company that not only had this clause, but it extended to any and all inventions pertaining to the employers line of business for 12 months after

by bugsy 16y ago

I worked for a company that not only had this clause, but it extended to any and all inventions pertaining to the employers line of business for 12 months after employment terminated. When employment terminated and I intended to go work for a competitor, I was given a letter explaining that the business of my employer was "software and hardware" and was told verbally they would aggressively pursue that claim. The also notified the company I was going to work for who then withdrew the employment offer. Probably wouldn't have stood up in court if I had a few million to pay attorneys. As it was it cost me around $30,000 in legal fees to deal with and I was unemployable for a full year during a time when my expertise, which I had gained on my own time before working for these people, was very hot. In the end it doesn't matter one whit what the law says because to maintain your rights you will have to fund lawyers longer than their staff attorneys are willing to harass you. In practice, you run out of money pretty fast. You must not sign these sorts of contracts or work for these people in any way shape or form if you want to avoid big trouble. When they inform you of these clauses, regardless of what the state law says, they are warning you they intend to create legal problems for you if you ever try to work for anyone else. Remember this one thing. If you do not have unlimited pockets you have no legal rights in a contest against a better funded party.

Silhouette 16y ago
> When they inform you of these clauses, regardless of what the state law says, they are warning you they intend to create legal problems for you if you ever try to work for anyone else. That sort of thing used to be called barratry, and it was illegal in a lot of jurisdictions (indeed, a felony in at least one state in the US). It's also worth pointing out that this kind of abuse is less of a threat in jurisdictions that don't default to everyone paying their own fees. The behaviour seems particularly common to the US, where to an outsider the legal system can seem obviously flawed in this respect. In any case, the advice to just not work for organisations that try to pull this kind of crap is sound. Even if this particular case doesn't apply, it's a good bet that they will try to screw you in other ways if this "we own your life" mindset is dominant in management/HR/legal at corporate level. I once worked for a company here in the UK that got taken over by a US company, and one of the first things they tried to do was rewrite the contract so this sort of silly stuff was in it. To cut a long story short, I don't know what happened to the HR people who were originally responsible for the handover, because we never saw them again, but most of the original staff from the acquired company did stay and everyone had exactly the original IP clauses back in the contracts by the time we'd finished collectively re-educating the new owners about how much of our lives they were going to own.
ajays 16y ago
Can you please name the employer so the rest of us can avoid them? Thanks!
- bugsy 16y ago
  They don't exist anymore! It may appeal to your Schadenfreude to know that shortly after this they went bankrupt - because I wasn't there and so they couldn't complete contracts and got sued into oblivion by their clients. I guess I'll mention the basic problem was I had a contract with them licensing one of my patents to them when I went to work there. They then told me they wanted me to transfer complete ownership of my patent to them when it became an issue that they wanted to license it to another company, which my license did not allow (non-transferable) and they didn't want to pay for. I said no, and so they fired me, but told me if I gave them the patent I could come back to work - blackmail! The other company then wanted to hire me and deal with me directly, and that's when my former employer launched legal proceedings and sabotaged my new job offer. That is when I found out that a qualified and experienced IP attorney who knows the law costs a lot more ($600/hr) than a regular family attorney ($100/hr). My attorneys were top guys nationally and were very clear that the company had absolutely no case whatsoever on any of their claims. It soon became apparent though that the company attorney was scheduling meetings with my attorneys solely for the purpose of bleeding me dry. For example, company attorney would demand to meet with multiple members of my firm to discuss things, and then talk slow, fumble with papers and act stupid, at a cost of $2400/hr to me because there were 4 attorneys there. My attorneys told me straight up that that was what the deal was and they called the company on their BS but the company kept trying these tactics. Eventually the company got buried in their own bad karma and gave up, but it still cost me a fortune to deal with and stole a year from my life and caused incredible stress and dismay. Lesson learned was that it simply does not matter that the law is on your side and the other people don't have a case if they are acting in bad faith. The good part was that I came out of it a lot wiser and since then I absolutely will not deal with any company that insists I agree to terms I don't feel are completely fair. That decision is still the right one, decades later, and completely changed the amount of BS I was dealing with in jobs. Any one who feels uncomfortable with any clause should not agree to it and be firm. If you have talent, you will find work for reasonable people and that work will be better paid and less stress than dealing with the jerks.

by bugsy 16y ago

Silhouette 16y ago

> When they inform you of these clauses, regardless of what the state law says, they are warning you they intend to create legal problems for you if you ever try to work for anyone else. That sort of thing used to be called barratry, and it was illegal in a lot of jurisdictions (indeed, a felony in at least one state in the US). It's also worth pointing out that this kind of abuse is less of a threat in jurisdictions that don't default to everyone paying their own fees. The behaviour seems particularly common to the US, where to an outsider the legal system can seem obviously flawed in this respect. In any case, the advice to just not work for organisations that try to pull this kind of crap is sound. Even if this particular case doesn't apply, it's a good bet that they will try to screw you in other ways if this "we own your life" mindset is dominant in management/HR/legal at corporate level. I once worked for a company here in the UK that got taken over by a US company, and one of the first things they tried to do was rewrite the contract so this sort of silly stuff was in it. To cut a long story short, I don't know what happened to the HR people who were originally responsible for the handover, because we never saw them again, but most of the original staff from the acquired company did stay and everyone had exactly the original IP clauses back in the contracts by the time we'd finished collectively re-educating the new owners about how much of our lives they were going to own.

ajays 16y ago

Can you please name the employer so the rest of us can avoid them? Thanks!

bugsy 16y ago
They don't exist anymore! It may appeal to your Schadenfreude to know that shortly after this they went bankrupt - because I wasn't there and so they couldn't complete contracts and got sued into oblivion by their clients. I guess I'll mention the basic problem was I had a contract with them licensing one of my patents to them when I went to work there. They then told me they wanted me to transfer complete ownership of my patent to them when it became an issue that they wanted to license it to another company, which my license did not allow (non-transferable) and they didn't want to pay for. I said no, and so they fired me, but told me if I gave them the patent I could come back to work - blackmail! The other company then wanted to hire me and deal with me directly, and that's when my former employer launched legal proceedings and sabotaged my new job offer. That is when I found out that a qualified and experienced IP attorney who knows the law costs a lot more ($600/hr) than a regular family attorney ($100/hr). My attorneys were top guys nationally and were very clear that the company had absolutely no case whatsoever on any of their claims. It soon became apparent though that the company attorney was scheduling meetings with my attorneys solely for the purpose of bleeding me dry. For example, company attorney would demand to meet with multiple members of my firm to discuss things, and then talk slow, fumble with papers and act stupid, at a cost of $2400/hr to me because there were 4 attorneys there. My attorneys told me straight up that that was what the deal was and they called the company on their BS but the company kept trying these tactics. Eventually the company got buried in their own bad karma and gave up, but it still cost me a fortune to deal with and stole a year from my life and caused incredible stress and dismay. Lesson learned was that it simply does not matter that the law is on your side and the other people don't have a case if they are acting in bad faith. The good part was that I came out of it a lot wiser and since then I absolutely will not deal with any company that insists I agree to terms I don't feel are completely fair. That decision is still the right one, decades later, and completely changed the amount of BS I was dealing with in jobs. Any one who feels uncomfortable with any clause should not agree to it and be firm. If you have talent, you will find work for reasonable people and that work will be better paid and less stress than dealing with the jerks.