Washington State carves out exceptions too. In addition to regulatory exceptions, some companies have policies where you can check in with the company to see i

Washington State carves out exceptions too. In addition to regulatory exceptions, some companies have policies where you can check in with the company to see if they would like to assert their IP rights over your work. If you work at a computer chip manufacturer and you decide you'd like to moonlight developing robots that make nacho-cheese chips, there's a pretty good chance that HR will be willing to give you a written document waiving their IP assignment in a narrowly-tailored way. I have successfully taken that approach in order to preserve my IP rights to continue my academic work and collaborations as I entered industry in an unrelated field.