Taken at face value, it's much worse than that. All the family photos he has taken, that novel on the back of his mind he wanted to write, that poem he wrote for his wife's birthday, the all belong to the company now. If he made a personal sex tape for his and his wife's enjoyment, the company can request it and sell it online or upload it to PornHub at their sole discretion.

There is no way in hell I would ever sign such a clause, unless there is literally life and death on the line.

No kidding! I used to work at Google and we had an orientation session on the IP policy. I asked if it would apply to a novel and was told that it would (but that they would probably assign the copyright if I asked).

I have worked at two FANG companies, and in both cases I crossed off this clause from the contract and initialed the line before I signed it. I told them that I couldn't sign that line and what I did, and in both cases, they said they would "get back to me" with what legal said. In both cases it never came up again, and I started working having signed only the modified contract.

I think that's a fair comprise of who owns what, and I would suggest anyone else to do the same thing I did.

IT has searched his OneDrive, laptop, etc., and we can't find a single shred of code/documentation on these ideas

I'd say the company got what it deserves.

Trust runs both ways, and once you blow that trust with your employee, you can't regain it.

That may sound bizarrely unfair to you, but elsewhere (Germany) it's actually the law (but only for inventions/patents, not other IP).

The employee has to tell the employer about any patentable idea, even if not in the general field of his employment, and even if having occurred after hours.

The employer can then either claim the patent (but has to pay something), or he can release the invention (and the employee can patent it on his own).

You are talking about Arbeitnehmererfindungen and those only belong to the employer if they are created on company time or if they are related to the work (Diensterfindung) every other invention belongs to the inventor (freie Erfindung) see §18 arbnerfg (3) althought you have to submit the invention to your employer if it could be related to the work (1-2)

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/arbnerfg/BJNR007560957.ht...

Yes, plenty of countries have bizarrely unfair laws.

(edit: it appears that the law in Germany is not as bad as initially presented by the parent comment).

The solution is to just make it explicit to your employer / manager what you’re doing, and save the emails / documents.

Just imagine the complete breakdown if a group of employees actually tried to go through with that: every wacky idea, from self-lacing shoes ("seem something similar in a movie") to bipedal gigawatt wind turbines that walk off to windier locations in a lull ("stomp, stomp, stomp! awesome!"). If they have to tell, some poor soul must be obliged to listen!

I did a little googling and it seems, that if you patent something that benefits your company, they can license it from you, and if they patent something you invent, then they have to pay you a revenue share. If they try and fuck you after a disclosure, then you get to keep the patent.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19477950

(Edit: couldn't find it in the law, and will not be in the University library soon to check the legal commentaries — but I still find that question interesting)

Friends have lost jobs at companies whose names you would recognize. eg M worked part-time as a sound tech in his own recording studio and his software job would mean they owned the rights to that work. M refused to sign the updated contract and ending up leaving the company over it.

I suspect it's not an insignificant factor in California being disproportionately represented when it comes to invention and innovation over the last half century or so.

That "100% your own resources" part is key, Microsoft provides a lot of free software. Employees working on their own projects have a "clean" setup that has never touched anything provided by Microsoft. Desktop/laptop, accessories, mobile phones, and so forth.

Heck Microsoft has on occasion promoted apps and tools made by its employees on their own time.

That other companies aren't like this confuses me.

There are rules against working on products that directly complete with existing Microsoft products, for obvious reasons, but aside from that, there aren't any real constraints.

(I've had plenty of friends at MS working on side projects that pulled in anywhere from hundreds to thousands a month, those projects tended to be written against MS technology stacks and made the MS Ecosystem better by their existence, why in the world wouldn't Microsoft want that to happen?)

As far as I know there are two differences.

a) Google claims ownership of things you produced off-hours with no company resources if the work you were doing off-hours is your job. If you are for example a DL theorist, you are being paid in part for your general skill at coming up with DL theories, not just for the hours you put in at the office. If you come up with a new DL theory in the shower instead of at your desk, Google still owns it.

b) Google claims ownership of innovations made by employees off-hours with no company resources if the innovations in question were already being researched elsewhere at Google or the innovation was already known to Google. Like any sufficiently large technology company, Google has made patentable discoveries that it has elected not to patent so as to maintain them as internal trade secrets. This is to avoid the mess that would ensue if an employee independently came up with one of these discoveries and filed a patent for it and Google had to dispute the patent by demonstrating prior art and in the process revealing their trade secret.

So if you have a new innovation that was produced off-hours and without company resources, you first submit it to Google's legal office and they will let you know whether they (a) consider it part of your job or (b) were already aware of it, and if so they will claim ownership. If you disagree with their decision there's a third party arbitration process so that you can hash it out without risking the exposure of a trade secret.

Fortunately it seems that most things like this are relatively unenforceable, but IMHO it's still a good idea to keep anonymity/"firewall" what is done on company time from everything else. Don't publish non-work-time material under an identity that could be traced back to your real identity with the company, for example.

Fortunately most of the time if the employer is stupid enough to sue for non-work related IP many courts will toss the case and render the clause void in the agreement. However there have been a few bad rulings as well.

I remember on case where the employer sued an employee over a book they wrote after the book was successful, the employer happened to be having financial problems... If I remember correctly the judge ruled in favor of the employer

Every organization says it wants to be exceptional, except where it comes to employee rights and compensation. Then it's "sorry but this is just how everyone does it", e.g. "you can't get b tyer treatment elsewhere"

That said, most companies I've worked for here put that in your contract, but then are more than happy to give you written permission to release rights to (for example) open source projects, or things not related to the business. I worked very briefly for one company which literally tried to assert ownership of photographs we took in our spare time while we worked for them (I won't name them, as they're a little over-litigous). I did not work there for long.

The company I worked for owned all my hardware designs.

However, if it was not hardware it was mine. About three years after the company grew I had to sign a contract - the contract clear said they owned all my designs.

I crossed that out, wrote in a clause they only got hardware designs made in shop, signed and date it, THEN had the president (small company still) also sign and date the changes.

Even if legally challenged, I could prove in court I was acting honestly and the expections of the signed contract.

I've had that clause in initial version of the contract at every Canadian tech company I've worked at except my current employer - I had to negotiate having it removed, and succeeded except the one time I've mentioned

I believe the crucial case was Conley v. DSC Communications Corp

They got a bunch of custom ADND software for Windows CE. At some point, I got a phone call asking why I was sending them this stuff. It apparently irritated someone enough they released me from those terms.

Programming used to be my hobby and I was always creating webapps or whatnot. Whatever I learned during off-hours, it improved my productivity at work.

Since starting work at this new company, I have lost all the zeal for programming on the side. It feels unfair. Not that my little apps will ever make enough money to get noticed at work. However, there is always a little voice in my head which keep saying don't spend too much time on this project, you don't own it.

Looking to get out as soon as possible.

> even during weekends/free-time

It sounds illegal. In the US, you can really specify such clause in the contract?

Few employers will want to claim ownership of your mobile game/app or whatever, unless it's related to the company or what it does.

I personally prefer to keep my code private by other means. But no judgement, hehe :)

But, hey I'm no lawyer..

It sounds like you haven't worked in tech before? Apple is one company well known for a clause like this.

At some employers this would also include "present at the office at a time when you're not expected to do work."

In reality, it would be up to the judge, jury, arbitrator, or hearing officer to apply this phrase to the facts or circumstances of any dispute (possibly with deference to on-point precedential or persuasive case law).

For people working remotely, this is more difficult, there’s no clear definition. Eventually, I don’t see a problem there anyway, given we measure by output and prohibit engineers from reusing our stuff in their private projects.

We do not employ people we don’t trust so we never had issues so far.

I would generally define this as not during work hours. Work hours are flexible, but don't be stupid: just don't interleave work stuff and personal project stuff and use your own equipment and you'll be fine.

ie if you take breaks from work and instead of wasting time on HN or reading news you bang out code on your personal projects, I'm not going to be enthused about that. But if you generally work 10-6 or so, and by 610 you've shut our laptop and you're coding away on your personal laptop? Great, have fun. Please don't burn out.

And ditto re: trust. The way to solve not trusting your employees is to fire them and hire trustworthy ones.

As a concrete example: we have had to implement a lot of data table stuff in javascript. If an employee copied that (functionality, not our code) and productized it, I wouldn't care. We'd probably even license it. I would want a discount on that license :)

This generally only applies in CA, and also to companies that are heavily invested in keeping the goodwill of their employees. Personally, I don't pick fights I can't win, and having valued eng leave is definitely not a win.

That works well enough for employees who work 8 uninterrupted hours per day 5 days per week as their work week. (Even for them, sometimes copyrightable personal projects are different enough to serve the same mentally restorative purpose during the workday that browsing the Internet can, like if it's poetry or designing a sweater.)

But not everyone performs best or happiest like that.

What about the employees that typically work 11-2, go for a gym break 2-4, work 4-6, go for dinner and time with their family, and then work 8pm-2am... but mix some personal side projects into the 8pm-2am part and think up advances on those personal projects while at the gym, plus do extra work for both personal and employer purposes on weekends?

Yes, these patterns are consistent with people I know in the industry. (I'm combining multiple people for anonymity.)

Notice those hours added up to well more than 8 work hours per day and more than 40 per week. If such people can't interleave personal and work stuff, they'll probably spend less time on work stuff overall and give less productivity to the company (if they don't switch to a more permissive employer).

And this is also for the protection of the employee. I'm a founder, and I can make pretty durable promises, but even my promises aren't 100% durable. If we get bought, or we don't perform and I get fired, my promises no longer matter. The employee doesn't want to be in a situation where he or she has built something valuable, I'm no longer in a position to keep my commitment, and the new owners want a piece.

I see that you're SRE/ops so your work is naturally more bursty, so that may color your perspective. For my company, I'm not sure how we would deal with that, except we don't really keep people on call outside of hours. We hired ops living in E Europe so they come on as we go to bed.

edit: given your suggestions of poetry or sweaters, sure, knock yourself out. I still won't be stoked about working a different business during my hours.

There are better ways to protect the employee, though: the legalese can omit time of day / day of week / place of work / equipment used as conditions of IP assignment. My current employer does this. (No it's not based in the US, but it is a startup funded by both US and home-country VCs).

Of course, the employer does own stuff created within the course of employment. Not a problem in any of the plausible future successful or failed exit scenarios.

Last thought: many good people in tech, very much able to do the jobs you ask of them, have ADHD, or kids, or athletic hobbies, or other reasons to do a bursty workday. Sometimes people seemingly outside these categories may turn out to be in them (e.g. new parents). Being incompatible with such workers makes it harder to hire and keep the talent tech companies need to succeed. (Sometimes it's illegal too, but that's a separate conversation.)

I feel the same for people who require very bursty working hours. Part of the job -- perhaps the most important part! -- is to collaborate with your team. If you want to spend 90m during the workday to go to the gym, make sure you're not holding your teammates back. We currently have two employees that do that and it works well for everyone. If you require 3 hour breaks mid afternoon, you're probably not going to work here.

And, everyone I've described manages to collaborate enough during the workday (and asynchronously at other times) despite often taking multiple hours per day for things like gym or family. I'm happy that I can hire such people, and I wish you luck in evolving your company to the point where you can similarly access the full pool of qualified candidates.

I think we've continued this conversation thread as much as we usefully can; thanks for an interesting exchange!