As we often claim here, the idea itself is worth little. It is the implementation of that idea that matters more. There are ways to ensure that the implementation belongs to the company. In software for instance, whatever has been committed to the company's version control belongs to the company.
> Contracts are two-sided deals... it seems fair to me that the person paying that money would expect clear rights to what they're paying for in return.
Sure, they get the code. That's it. If that brings down the company, maybe they should have had a better business model. We don't have to bend over backwards to ensure that companies make a profit. Another forward-thinking, responsible company (such as RedHat) can take their place.
Laws should serve us first. Not corporate interests.
Not necessarily, if the employee already had similar code outside work that no-one at the office was aware of or understood but for which the employee could demonstrate holding significant rights in some reasonable way.
There are all kinds of ways that situation, or even enough ambiguity that the situation is a possibility, can backfire legally for the company. The best result for the employer in such a case is likely to be undertaking a significant amount of costly legal work and winding up with all the rights. There are many plausible and much worse outcomes.
Laws should serve us first. Not corporate interests.
False dichotomy is false.
Seriously, I've taken on whole HR teams over this kind of issue, and I won. I've walked away from potentially lucrative positions because I got a bad vibe about how the employer viewed work/life balance or had a dubious term about it in the contract and didn't seem likely to agree to change it. I really am the guy who should be totally on your side in this debate. So if this situation doesn't even convince someone like me to side with the employee, probably either it's not as simple as you're making out or your position is one-sided beyond the point of being reasonable.
The implications are the same, and in both cases, I am on the side of the employee.
Why would you think that? It's a completely different situation.
For the record, I have no problem with restricting someone from using trade secrets or disclosing other confidential information they learned as part of one job for the benefit of another (probably competing) employer.
I do have a problem with saying if you quit one job you can't then even work in the same industry for some period afterwards, unless a suitable amount of consideration is given in return.
Other things being equal, I would agree with you. But it seems like other things are far from equal in this case, because the project in question is in exactly the field that its author was being paid to work in by his employer.
If any related work that (the employee says) happens outside office hours belongs to the employee in that case, what is to stop someone from simply claiming that any good idea they have on the project their employer pays them to work on happened at home after hours, the prototype code they wrote to implement it also happened away from the office, and therefore they assert the rights to it personally and the employer had better pay them whatever they want or be prevented from using exactly the work they are already paying the employee to do for them?
I find it troubling that so many people are alright with signing away their personal rights.
So do I, but contracts are two-sided deals. The other side here is that software developers are typically paid a significant amount of money for their work already, and it seems fair to me that the person paying that money would expect clear rights to what they're paying for in return.
There is nothing to stop the employer and employee from incorporating some mutually agreeable condition that makes clear how the projects are split and who will get which rights, assuming such a mutually agreeable condition can be found. But as others have noted, for something that is so directly related to what an employee works on by day, there is an obvious conflict of interest.