News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on IBM employee forced to stop kernel work under personal email address. Parent comment

Re:IBM employee forced to stop kernel work under personal em... by strenholme on Monday April 19, 2021 @11:52PM (#26870490)
Clauses like that aren’t allowed in California. California law says that anything I do in my own time, on my own equipment, and not related to my company’s product is something my employer is not allowed to own.

I make this crystal clear whenever signing an “inventions” clause, and I avoid companies which make, say, DNS servers, for exactly that reason.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IBM employee forced to stop kernel work under personal em... by wvenable on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @12:20AM (#26870630)
In this case it is related to the company's product so that exemption would not apply.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IBM employee forced to stop kernel work under personal em... by wmu on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @01:51AM (#26871126)
The sentence in question is misinterpreted. I read it like this: our contract applies all the time, not only when you're directly working for the company. We don't know what the contract exactly says. Likely there's an agreement not to work on IBM-related products in spare time.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IBM employee forced to stop kernel work under personal em... by saagarjha on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @02:32AM (#26871376)
California law overrides illegal contracts. However, in this case such provisions would be legal as the sibling comments point out.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IBM employee forced to stop kernel work under personal em... by gher-shyu3i on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @09:21AM (#26874240)
Why only CA? Shouldn't it be that "the law" overrides illegal contracts - basically a tautology? Otherwise, what's stopping anyone from writing illegal contracts and forcing the other party to abide by them?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IBM employee forced to stop kernel work under personal em... by __jem on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @10:15AM (#26874978)
Because the basis of every state's contract laws are different. Something are illegal in CA but not in NY.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IBM employee forced to stop kernel work under personal em... by tsimionescu on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @01:49AM (#26871117)
Sure, but in this case they were working on the kernel driver of an IBM NIC.
[ Parent | on HN ]