I've had a number of jobs over the years, both at public universities and private companies. Each time there was this nasty sounding piece of legal paper presen

I've had a number of jobs over the years, both at public universities and private companies. Each time there was this nasty sounding piece of legal paper presented to me about patents and copyrights "You agree that every good idea you ever have is property of..." I've never signed one. Sometimes they'd counter with a much more reasonable agreement, and in a couple of cases they didn't seem to have any idea what to do so they just blew it off, after having a few attempts at pestering me to sign it. A couple times the HR people involved seemed quite annoyed that anyone would be different and told me that nobody else ever had any issue with their agreement and why won't I just sign it so we can move forward? If that's really true, then I wish more people would read things before they sign them.