It's not just inventions, though. The phrase is:

    invention, discovery or item of intellectual property

The "item of intellectual property" would cover copyrighted material, right?

Seems way unenforceable to me, but IANAL.

>The "item of intellectual property" would cover copyrighted material, right?

Very much possible, but as someone else alluded to, this clause is incomplete without the rest of the agreement. Somewhere in the agreement "intellectual property" may be defined [better] and it may include copyright, and it might include terms that narrow down what copyright falls within their definition of "intellectual property" (i.e. copyright-able works which pertain to the business of the company). They don't want to own everything... what if I write software for a personal pet project and it causes damages... they would open up themselves to potential liability (unless they cover that, again, somewhere else in the agreement). The entire agreement text is needed for clarity and to make conclusions.

The agreement explicitly says "or item of intellectual property". It's absurd.

I wonder if you could create a toxic legal liability by assigning an IP right to the company. E.g. create a trademark about bestiality or pornography, and assign it to the company. Or file a toxic patent (it doesn't need a lawyer). Obvious difficulty to find something you can publish while avoiding legal liability yourself...

*The CLAUSE explicitly says "or item of intellectual property".

We can't conclude what the agreement means by "intellectual property". See comment to sister reply. We need the entire agreement text to make conclusions.