> "we own everything you do" -- is not the same as "every other company" .. flatly false This is not a commonly held position, but maybe we can use a third par

> "we own everything you do" -- is not the same as "every other company" .. flatly false This is not a commonly held position, but maybe we can use a third party to mediate the dispute. Joel Spolsky has written on the subject not that long ago[1]: > So before you hire this developer, you agree, “hey listen, I know that inventing happens all the time, and it’s impossible to prove whether you invented something while you were sitting in the chair I supplied in the cubicle I supplied or not. I don’t just want to buy your 9:00-5:00 inventions. I want them all, and I’m going to pay you a nice salary to get them all,” and she agrees to that, so now you want to sign something that says that all her inventions belong to the company for as long as she is employed by the company. > This is where we are by default. This is the standard employment contract for developers, inventors, and researchers. So let's meet in the middle: it is an uphill battle to get an employer to assign IP created 'off the clock' to you. Even when I was working for a public university, for a department dedicated to supporting open source, they had me sign an IP agreement. I don't have the text of the contract to quote you, but as I recall it was the same 24/7/365 overreach. Amusingly, this leads to a substantial conflict; I hear tales of people circumventing the policy by using a personal email account to land things upstream. [1]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...