Disclaimer, I'm not a lawyer, this isn't legal advice. I've dealt with this part of the code as both an employee and an employer.

California labor law section 2870

(a) Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or her rights in an invention to his or her employer shall not apply to an invention that the employee developed entirely on his or her own time without using the employer’s equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information except ...[1]

It then goes on to carve out some exceptions. The one that Google leans on is this one:

(1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer;

Google argues that they anticipate researching and developing anything you might be interested in working on so its theirs. In my case I pushed legal to say, in writing, that even if I wrote an iOS kitchen timer application on my own time with my own equipment, then Google would own that app. My attorney suggested that if I sued them they would likely lose, but if I sued them they would stop employing me anyway, so if I really wanted to go into the Kitchen Timer app business I should just quit rather than risk Google making a claim to my IP that I would have to pay expensive legal fees to get invalidated.

This section of the code has been litigated many times and the general consensus is time that you are both not at work, and you aren't required to be at work, can be considered "your own time" by this statute.

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

There is an argument (and 'dragonwriter, if I have the measure of him, is illustrating it rather than advocating it) that a salaried employee has no "own time" except insofar as their time is not required by the employer.

They can quit if they want time that the employer does not deign to grant them.

In my more cynical moments I think this is the prevailing view in American tech.

Well, I'm somewhere in between illustrating and advocating (EDIT: “advocating” here as “advocating as legally true” rather than “advocating as desirable”); I'm generally dubious that there is a meaningful legally cognizable boundary of “own time vs. work time” as opposed to “own activity vs. work activity” for salaried employees paid for work product, as opposed to employees paid for hours of work. If you are working on something within the scope of what you are contracted to do for your employer, it would seem to be, ipso facto, work time.

EDIT: Moreover, I think that essentially what Google is doing here is having you sign away things which they otherwise could, and would were the assignment provision not permitted to them, simply prohibit outright via a during-employment non-compete, which even California (with it's unusually firm stance against post-employment non-compete) is generally fine with.

Sure, and employers actively (and probably to our, as workers, detriment) cause that conflation to make it harder to understand what that worker is allowed to do with their lives.

Criticizing the notion of "own time" when the people who effectively have the power, and the greater share of organization (both extant and allowed), perpetuate that notion seems like a less-than-useful use of time.

Your description of how intellectual property works is untrue.

In the state of California, there very much is strong protections for workers intellectual property.

And the courts do not share your opinion on what is someone's "own time" or not. The courts instead protect workers.

It is possible that Google has made its employees sign some illegal contracts, that aren't enforceable in court. But if this stuff theoretical went to court, the law sides with workers.

> You don't understand.

Yes I do.

> Google claims ownership even on the stuff that you do on _your own_ time, like nights and weekend

On what basis, as a salaried employee paid for work output and not time-at-a-place, are evenings and weekends described as “your own time” any more than any other time?

On the basis of the employer designating those days as non-work days?

>> On what basis

On the basis that the contract says "40 hours a week". I don't owe the employer jack beyond that.

> On the basis that the contract says "40 hours a week".

It's extremely rare for salaried worker contracts to say that.

Most in the UK do, albeit normally with a caveat about exceptional situations.

Not for salaried they don't its no fixed hours of work - some employee handbooks will have core hours and a suggested average per week.

It's the norm almost everywhere in the world.