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What you need to do is look at the terms of employment under which you were employed.
If there is anything in it that specifically gives them the right to patent your stuff, then you should have considered it when you signed it.

Otherwise, and I'd imagine you read the employment agreement before signing it, they are going into territory that was not specifically covered in the employment agreement and as such you are now open to re-negotiations and a changing or extending the terms of employment to cover your stand. Anything prior to this .... well they would be in the wrong if they tried to make retroactive some change in the terms to support patenting of software, which were not there before. Just don't work in the country of Texas where they make up the law as they go along,

Software Patents are provably acts of fraud and are and will continue to diminish in standing. This can reflect upon not only the company but you as well, as your name would either be on the patent (in the event the PTO grants it a patent), or it would be in you full right to invalidate the patent by showing the person taking the credit is not the genuine creator of the software.

You should probably be looking for work elsewhere to cover your bases.

The reality is many of these contracts are unreasonable and would be seen as such by a judge, so it's easier to sign and worry about the consequences later.

If you think these contracts are not enforceable, you need to look up DSC Communications vs Evan Brown.

http://www.unixguru.com/

I'm in California, and I typically just sign those things with a rider, "not legal in California, and if that changes, I expect to renegotiate the contract." They don't seem to care. I even point out my notes, in case they're just oblivious. But they care later, though. One particularly bad company I used to work for issued a ruling that no one could own or work on "any Web sites, including personal ones."

I told them that it wasn't legal. They said that there were moonlighting exemptions in California law, so that they could prohibit it. We argued for a while about what was considered "moonlighting" and how the hell a personal site could qualify, then finally I shrugged and said, "I exempted myself in our legal agreement." They checked, and boy were they pissed. I kept my sites running, while all the other employees shut theirs down or got really quiet about what they were doing.

If you're not in California, I would say that you should strike out the lines you don't agree with, sign it, and turn it in. If their lawyers freak out, they'll come back to negotiate more with you. You'll have to decide if you want to play hardball. They could fire you if they think you're not worth the trouble. I typically have enough job offers that I call bluffs like that, but I feel that it's a dangerous lead to follow if you really need the job. Good luck.

Innovators must be protected, but not necessarily the companies and repressive ideologies (or anything repressive for that matter) which earn billions off of their hard work.

Comparing the effectiveness of either little or no protection is tricky: Which is more effective? Is the moderately protected system better than the overprotected system, because it encourages more innovation; — or perhaps the overprotectedness of a system is better, because the extent of overprotection forces (or stimulates) people to create something uniquely new that builds little on other people's work, but is impossible to develop further by anyone else (but the inventor) past the patent expiry date?

What can lead to stagnation, though, is when innovation is stifled by any way or method that actively or just by proxy suppresses ideas and thoughts, discussing them, etc. New ideas and concepts are not useful when voluntary propagation of these may land you in jail or otherwise cause considerable (such as legal) discomfort.

For example, it's not good to innovate in Texas, because companies there have complete right to their workers' mindshare, thus it's somewhat better to be an innovator in California. In either case should and must an innovator not divulge his idea before he submits a patent application.

Another example is the Soviet Union, where applying most of R&D stayed within the Soviet military complex and some research in many subjects was outright suppressed or was taboo at best. Both articles cite reasons from insufficient funding compared to all kinds of military projects (10/90% ratio) to discouragement of new ideas for ideological reasons and then of export restrictions to the SU and then corruption.

I might as well submit something later in addition...

Evan Brown ran into this problem.

He lost his job and spent quite a while in court fighting it.

His contract used the word "inventions" instead of "idea" but they interpreted "invention" to include just about anything.

http://www.unixguru.com/

Be VERY VERY careful of what you disclose. If you have digital and physical backups, keep them safe. What is yours BEFORE your employer comes to know you and which you never had access to before employment or collaboration with others should be YOURS, if you can prove it so and can force them to admit they have no records to substantiate their claims.

Moreover, if it's outside the realm of their business sphere and they just being greedy, don't let them win. Everybody with an ability to use some software is likely to try to hack out their own solution, but no two people will likely architect and style the things perfectly identically.

IF, by chance you MUST go to court, try to demand (beg) from the court that the other side can NOT make 'discovery' against your material. BUT, by the same token, YOUR side cannot ask to see theirs, either. Hell, once they have access to YOUR stuff, they can frabricate information and dates (hell, recently microsoft pulled so much obfuscation crap that the judge on the case was infuriated and lopped on an additional $25 M or so the fines/penalities; shoulda lopped on about $60 BILLION-- according to your ability or pain threshold, YOU PAY!... $25 M is chump change to ms...)...

BUT, the idea is that IF they so intimately KNOW and developed YOUR idea, then they should and better be able to explain it to the JUDGE AND JURY better than YOU. If they fail, they obviously they stole your idea and tried to wrest your control/ownership away.

I DID once or twice list to employers the generic descriptions, but never EVER provided any damned sketches, diagrams, etc...

IFFFF you bike or commute to work and take your personal work via laptop or disk archives, remember, that if your employer is an asshole, they could invoke the employment contract terms to lay claim to inspecting your bags, or contents thereof. If they are REALLY nasty, they could get a sheriff/warrant issuer to seize your stuff and inspect it, even if it is a treasure hunt to string together stuff...

David Syes, posting anonymously...

http://www.unixguru.com/ (Probabably a dead horse on /., but worth a cautionary mention.)

http://unixguru.com/

go ahead and check it out.

Depending upon in what state or country you live, this might be worth reading:

"Does Your Employer Own Your Thoughts"
http://www.unixguru.com/

It is probably imperative that SOME if not MOST developers escrow away or safely archive their non-employer-related hacks, developments and such and make sure the future is not imperilled by an employer who intentionally, deviously, or accidentally assigns an employee to tasks or projects that are too close to the hobby or alternate/freelance/self-employment/consultation work an employee does.

It very well could be that an employer hires an employee to exploit their talent, but then goes and gets greedy by trying to lay hands on his/her personal portfolio by assigning work at work that poisons or taints work done at home. Refuse to cooperate, or do too much sanitation documentation, you might get fired.

It might be best to use tools, methods, and implementations as different as possibly than your employer's past or roadmapped projects and products.

No need to be adversarial, just be safe and smart. In Invention Disclosures/Prior Inventions, make sure that you don't over-explain your thing, but do make sure what you describe is truthful and verifiable by external parties.

I would say if your employer tries to take you to court later, demand before being hired, or demand in court that the employer not have direct access. Ask the judge for a middle party who will be enjoined from telling ANYthing to the accusers. Demand the inspectors relate information to the judge. That is, if your hobby works are THAT important. Chances are, if your employer is that hard-up to get your hobby or force you to extend to work the practices you do at home, then maybe your onto something and ought to renegotiate your employment contract into terms suitable and equitable to all concerned. If they play hardball, then maybe you need to quit and find an investor after you get a judge to let your use some obscure law that is effectively your "preemptive strike" that says, basically, you broke no laws and are not at the mercy of your employer or some other company or individual out to get your works you never stole. If you later on are found to have perjured, then your ass should fry.

THIS should be required reading for ALL programmers, especially the younger ones:

http://www.unixguru.com/

This Evan Brown suffered under the arcane, lame-ass intellectual property laws of Texas. California has some similar, and virtually ALL of them are written or perpetuated by a sleazy combination of some attorneys and some judges at the behest of high-tech.

I worked for a mortgage company for about 11 months before we got gobbled up and laid off by a mega-corp out of La Jolla. But prior to the merger/acquisition, the original counsel for the company that hired me had some boilerplate mumbo jumbo that spelt doom in some cases for me. See, they were using Open Source technology and building proprietary products, and I told them they in no way shape or form could develop financial stuff, wrap it up in legalese and then claim that NO one can use it, particularly when the Linux devs there were using their own brains in conjunction with loads of examples from school and from a number of "How-To..." books written to teach the growing or experienced developer. I told the counsel that there is NO way the company can legally lay claim to the work of authors who say THIS IS MY IDEA AND YOU CAN USE IT... and then abuse that author's generosity.

Needless to say, I was out of steady work for over 2.5 years and of course I signed the effing NDA/Disclosure Agreement, 'cause I needed a paycheck.

The other problem I had was that even though I worked in both halves of the operation (part mortgage, part software development, where I did data entry, IT desktop support, report writing, charting and occasional data sanitation based on immediate dev hacks that needed user feedback...), I immediately saw that my database and ad-hoc report-writing skills were going to be imperilled.

See, I once purchased a home, bought books about buyers mistakes, strategies, etc, and and I've seen the various real estate forms. I bought my first home without a lawyer or agent. That stuff intrigued me, so I decided one day I'd database forms and rates and such, and it so happened to be what the employer was doing. But, it's not rocket science. That didn't really bother them. They didn't want me doing stuff related to the rate shop engine. I told them I was for over a year doing something with Lotus Approach, a missile launch/intercept interface. It, to me, was a database way (vs algorithm/math degree/gee-whiz way) of applying the various limits of speed, range/distance, altitude of the launched missile vs the target position then, now and projected. I wanted to scare them into knowing that what they're (were, now, since the devs were all fired or laid off) doing is not new to the mortgage industry, and that any sophisticate database or query work requires math or a slew of searchable data from which inferences can be made or deduced.

Boy, they didn't like that, but they didn't fire me...

Goddam california labor law.. Giveth then taketh away from the law-illiterate but application-capable doe-in-the-headlights employee. All in the name of protecting (mostly) big business...

At least that's MY take on things.

What makes you think they can't legally compel you to reveal what you gave them the rights to by transmitting... i.e. the exact plaintext of your encrypted message... kind of like in the case of Evan Brown.. where since he conferred ownership of the ideas, he was to be forced to dish them up and flesh them out...

Evan Brown is living proof
http://www.unixguru.com/

"That is, the rights of an enslaved individual to liberty vs. the rights for you to pirate someone's copyrighted work?"

No, he is comparing the rights of an enslaved part of the population to the rights of an a wholly enslaved population.

The fact is that once common thoughts are "patented" or "copyrighten" we all end up as the very worst examples of share croppers. We can very quickly end up in a situation were functioning just enough to feed our families costs us more in licenses than we can earn. We have already seen cases where individuals have lost the rights to their own thoughts. http://www.unixguru.com/

My name is Evan Brown and I was sued by DSC for thoughts that only existed in my brain. DSC was in the business of manufacturing telecommunications equipment. My idea related to software reverse engineering and was not along the lines of DSC's business. In an attempt to avoid litigation, I requested a release before I spent any additional time developing my idea. I thought that my idea had significant value in 1996 because of the Y2K code conversions that were already in process at that time. The IP agreement I signed stated in effect that DSC had rights to (All inventions made or conceived along DSC's line of business...) My idea was not an invention and was not related to DSC's business. Judge Henderson of the 219th State District Court of Texas granted DSC a Temporary Injunction against me requiring me to be at DSC's facilities from 9am until 5pm every business day until I made a full and complete disclosure. I disclose my idea twice, once in the form of descriptions of the processes and methods, and the second time in the form of computer programs written in C. It took me 3 months to write the programs to implement my idea which it turned out, did not work as I had originally thought. I was not compensated for my time (3 months labor) or my expenses (mileage, lodging, etc) as I live 160 miles one way from DSC facilities. The US Constitution abolished slavery and servitude with the 13 amendment but the news hasn't reached Judge Henderson's court yet. Even though I fully and completely disclosed my idea including where and why my idea failed to work properly, DSC claimed that I was withholding information. DSC's technical experts couldn't figure out how to fix the bug either. Judge Henderson granted DSC's motion for summary judgment on breach of contract and again in the final judgment, ruling that DSC owned my idea. By granting the MSJ and final judgment, Judge Henderson has ruled that my idea (mere thoughts that did not work) was an invention and it was along the lines of DSC's business even though DSC never produced any evidence of business plans, customers, project plans, or any other evidence supporting their claim that my idea was along their line of business. DSC lied to the court when they stated the I was in charge of the group responsible for the development of automated code conversion software tools. I challenged DSC's many erroneous statements but the court ignored all my challenges. DSC hired outside counsel at up to $350/hr to represent DSC against me as I represented myself in court. The court granted DSC's Motion for Declaratory Judgment against me for attorneys fees in the amount of $332,000 even though I filed for Ch 13 bankruptcy in Jan 2000 and DSC was listed as a creditor. The Temporary Injunction entered by the court rendered me unemployable. I was unable to find a company that would offer me a job in my field until the DSC lawsuit issues were settled. None of the companies I interviewed with wanted to take the risk of being enjoined in the lawsuit and then having to spend thousands of dollars to fight DSC's litigation. I feel that I was railroaded by Judge Henderson and denied my rights to equal justice. In Texas, a businesses such as DSC contribute thousands of dollars to the re-election campaigns of judges even though many run for office unopposed. When a judge decides to retire, I understand that they just pocket their campaign funds. The details of the lawsuit are on the internet at http://www.unixguru.com/ and of particular interest are the briefs and Motion for Rehearing filed with the Fifth Court of Appeals of Texas at Dallas.

Here:

"The effect of this ruling is that employers in Texas can claim ownership of thoughts in their employees brains. Texas courts can and will uphold these employer claims. Texas courts can order an employee that has been fired to work for the former employer without compensation for time or expenses. What ever you have accomplished prior to going to work for your employer can become property of your your current employer."

Isn't Texas the state where you're not allowed to wear checked trousers and eating ice cream on Sunday is a capital offence? I hope so.

One of the relatively recent cases on this kind of issue involves an old friend of mine, Evan Brown.

Evan was already working on an idea on his own time when he went to work for DSC. When he had the idea ready to proceed further, DSC claimed it belonged to them, not to Evan.

That was in 1997. The case is still dragging on.

There's even been a Dilbert comic strip that referred to the case.

You can read more about it at Who Owns Evan Brown's Brain?

There is an article (pdf format) in a law journal about the case you can download from Evan's web site at: Lai, Jim C, Alcatel USA, Inc. v. Brown: Does Your Boss Own Your Brain?, The John Marshal Journal of Computer & Information Law, Vol XXI No 3, pp 295-324.

One of the relatively recent cases on this kind of issue involves an old friend of mine, Evan Brown.

Evan was already working on an idea on his own time when he went to work for DSC. When he had the idea ready to proceed further, DSC claimed it belonged to them, not to Evan.

That was in 1997. The case is still dragging on.

There's even been a Dilbert comic strip that referred to the case.

You can read more about it at Who Owns Evan Brown's Brain?

There is an article (pdf format) in a law journal about the case you can download from Evan's web site at: Lai, Jim C, Alcatel USA, Inc. v. Brown: Does Your Boss Own Your Brain?, The John Marshal Journal of Computer & Information Law, Vol XXI No 3, pp 295-324.

A copy of the law can be found here.

The many body of 2870 is below. 2872 requires the company to notify you of this.

-bri

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 for those inventions that either:

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; or

Result from any work performed by the employee for the employer.

Still, I think your interpretation is overboard. Just saying that Apple is a software company, therefore all employee software is owned does not cut it for me. Care to point to some case law that makes things as obvious as you say they are?

It's good to have this little talk periodically. You can line out sections of any contract you don't like and leave it up to the company to ammend it. The decision to work or not to work for people who think they own you is a personal one, but you owe it to yourself to see what kind of a company you are dealing with. If they refuse to ammend your contract, they are rigid and you might not be happy there.

Revolt. Free software gives us the power to refuse because you can earn a living with it without the help of a company that's way too powerful for comfort.

What would a judge say? IANAL, so I'm not sure, I bet it would depend on the judge. Also, most employees don't want to take their employers to court, it can make it a bit tough to convince somebody else to hire you (employee who sued previous employer is a rather big hiring red flag).

Something is strange here. The linked version of California Labor Code, Section 2870 from the original story has a totally different text as for example the one pasted in another reply to this story. And the differences are really important here: The linked version says that the employer cannot claim rights to the software except for those that either is related to his business or resulted from work performed by the employee for the employer.

The version in the reply has it totally different, it says that the employer cannot claim rights to the software which is not related to his business or did not result from work performed by the employee for the employer.

This are to very different regulations. In the second one your work can be related to the business of your company if you did no do related work. E.g. your company does produce web browsers, but you are hired for creating a database. In this case and the second version you can create a web browser in your own time, and it belongs to you.

In the first version of the law the web browser would belong to your company, as it is sufficient that your company is active in this field.

Sorry, but i'm confused. Which version of the law is the current one, and where does the other one originate from? After all this is a really meaningful difference. Please, can someone bring some insight into this?

RTA.

If his contract states that whatever he works on at work is the property of Apple, then he is fucked and tough shit to him.

And then the California District Attorney can post an arrest warrant for Steve Jobs...

California's labor-laws are notoriously pro-employee. Contracts like that are illegal there. Enforcing an illegal contract is a crime.

Evan Brown used to work for DSC Communications and ran into the same problem.

Except in Evan's case, he had his idea before he ever went to work for DSC and until ordered by the judge, it remained an idea, not an invention. The judge ordered him to develop it for DSC without pay.

Check out Evan's web site on the issue

My Uncle worked at DSC, now Alcatel, and when he invented an idea for software reverse-engineering (note, this idea is not related to telecommunication), on his own time, and begun before employment by DSC, they rewarded him with a large threat and later a pink slip. Then tried to sue him for it. Read on at Unixguru.com This has been going on in excess of four years, and, as you might imagine, has greatly deteriorated my respect for corporations. I would not treat your employer as a friend but, like Stienman said, as a potential customer.

Read: http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/indpr op/comp/alcatel.pdf

and who owns your thoughts?

just how disconnected must one be, to be safe???

The only way to undermine the direction of software patents (worldwide even) is to , to use an analogy. The Roman Numeral system was outdated and proven to be weak in power compaired to the Hindu-Arabic Decimal system. In essence it proved beyond doubt that the Roman Numeral system was greatly lacking the value of nothing as a place holder. It showed fault in the Roman Numeral system use in mathmatics.

In the same way, the software patent issue is like the Roman Numeral system in not showing a more complete and full scope picture of reality.

Most software patents are in fact in violation of even the three primary things you cannot patent, natural law, physical phenomenon and abstract ideas, and further violate the case of mathmatical algorythims not supposed to be being patentable, amoung other "cannot patent" facets.

What is lacking is genuine and validateable software engineering foundation upon which software can be tested against to see if it might qualify for patentability.

In other words, the skill of babeling abstractions from an industry focused on such skill has dumbfounded those outside of that industry, including offices of Intellectual property grants.

What is needed to undo this problems growing in wrongful IP rights is to establish the genuine science of the physics of abstraction creation and usage.

Or in the analogy of Roman Numeral vs. Decimal System, the Natural laws of the Physical Phenomenon of creating and using abstract ideas from "nothing" is a simply not a patentable process in a patent system that fully recognizes the physics of abstraction. Which the current IP granting system and psuedo science does not recognize. Once such genuine software science has recognized this "zero" of abstraction physics then a great deal becomes so undeniably easy and obvious (like what the decimal system did for mathmatics) that a great deal more of the "not patentable" factor comes undeniably into view for even the typical user/consumer.

Or perhaps you would rather only the professional experts be allowed use of teh decimal system of mathmatics and calculations.....?????

First, he signed a contract without fully understanding the terms or consulting with a lawyer to explain it to him. When you go about the business of selling your soul, you really need to read the fine print.

Second, he went to the company and told them he had a brilliant idea, even though he hadn't put anything down on paper yet. He should've just quit his job, then developed his idea. There would have been no way for the company to prove that he came up with the idea while he was employed by them.

By the way, this guy may have a beautiful mind, but he sure has an ugly webpage.

I think Evan is now bankrupt. There's information from him as well as links to other articles about the case on his website.

Why do people keep thinking that the truth will set them free? The fact is, a smart person -- even if they are entirely in the right, ethically, morally, and probably legally -- will likely get fscked over by the legal system if they represent themself.

Yeah, it would be great if life were like movies, where you could simply plead your case, making sense, convincing a judge/jury that you are right. Unfortunately, lawyers are highly paid for a reason. THEY KNOW HOW TO PLAY THE GAME. Lawyers go through specialized training, they pass tests, they have other lawyers to confer with, they understand the rules of the game.

My god, even lawyers usually know enough to not try to defend themselves (something about having a fool for a client).

So, typically what we see is a guy defending himself and then getting outraged that he got screwed by the judge because he missed a deadline, or didn't file a brief correctly.

This guy may lose the money he'd make from the invention, $300,000 for the company's legal fees, his house, etc... Yet in his "What's new" page on his web site he states Again, the courts violated my rights to due process. Come on, you almost never hear people who've been defended by good lawyers claim that their due process rights have been repeatedly violated.

Maybe he should have contacted the EFF. No matter what, he should have gotten a snake^H^H^H^H^H lawyer to defend him.

Oh, and I hate people who write their web sites in the third person...

I work at Alcatel in Plano, and most people here agree that while Evan is a nice guy, he pretty much slit his own throat from day one.

This is really not as simple as "Alcatel (DSC, really) owning soandso's idea", although it makes great headlines.

What happened was:
1. He signed an agreement (which most of us do not have to, BTW) giving DSC rights to anything he invented - gee whiz, Cisco, Sun, Nortel, Oracle - pretty much eveyone does this with the few choosen employees who get to sit around and dream up these things.
2. He made the big mistake of telling his supervisors about this great idea of his when there was no written documentation (duh.)
3. DSC offered to give him a big $$$ check for his idea, but, he decided to "fight the man" (read: gamble) for his idea and he lost.
4. Even Evan himself admits that he could have excluded this idea (that he has always said he starting working on in 1975) from the legal agreement (doh!). Maybe he would have stood a better chance in court if he had some prior documentation or at least a mention of it.

Whats the real lesson here? Common sense always applies. If you've got a million dollar idea - dont sign an intellectual prop agreement! Or how about, Dont listen to lawyers who want you to go to court so they can get rich from you (my personal favorite).

I truly like Evan Brown, and i hate to see him get slammed by our legal guys (i've watched this case since 1999), but for the most part we all believe he just made bad decisions as opposed to being victimized.

BTW, we have running joke at Alcatel that our legal department is a profit center - we've sued many more people and corps... :-)

Here's a link to the Texas guys website: http://www.unixguru.com

If I were a free software author living in Texas, I most probably would not be able to take a job in the computer industry, because Texas law, the way the Texas courts intepret it, gives employees the rights even to Open Source software that you write in your spare time on your own equipment.

-E

And if you think an employer would never dream of taking ownership of an employee's off-hours work, just ask Evan Brown what he thinks of the idea.
--

If everyone did as you suggested, not only would the execs not understand what was going on, they would just hire new people who know less at a lower salary. Then they would pat themselves on the back for a good cost cutting measure.

That's all well and good -- right up until the point where something breaks...! When you're the world's largest ISP, and one of your key systems goes down, you trust that you have a sysadmin who can "take care of it." When the most skilled sysadmin you have left is the kid you hired away from a tech support gig at Brent's Internet Service and Tree-Trimming of Dothan, Alabama, then all of a sudden that $50,000 a year less you were paying him than his predecessor begins to look like chump change, and he'll be as overwhelmed as a Radio Flyer on the receiving end of a front-end loader.

Personally, I wouldn't work in any situation where my free-time-dev rights were restricted either -- and because of that, I slammed the door in the face of one of the nation's largest consulting firms last summer when they tried to get me to sign one. Anyone who doesn't understand why needs to visit Evan Brown's website. But in this case, I suspect that in return for the 10^7 or so dollars they paid him, Justin probably did sign away a lot of his rights; assuming a large chunk of it was in stock, he has a strong interest in "protecting" Time-Warner's IP as well -- in fact if he is in fact a "corporate officer" of AOL/TW, then he has a fiduciary responsibility to AOL/TW's shareholders which he is already theoretically in breach of for having released gnutella in the first place! Ouch!



This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.

Also, you don't fully realise how far this problem goes. See Does Your Employer Own Your Thoughts?. Evan Brown is property of DSC Communications, for all intents and purposes, and _all_ hours of his life when employed by DSC were 'work'. That sounds implausible, but he signed off on a contract which gave DSC ownership of any thoughts he had, thinking it wasn't a problem as he was only employed to provide technical support for the Motorola Cellular Division software testing group, not to invent things. He did invent something, apparently a method to convert old computer code into new languages, and DSC first tried to buy the idea, and then fired him and sued him for it. The idea has never been written down and exists only in Evan's brain...

As of January 20, 2000, Evan Brown is bankrupt and has sold everything he has but the farm on which he lives. On his 48th birthday, Judge Curt B. Henderson of the 219th Judicial District Court of the State of Texas has ordered him to work at DSC's PB-6 building in Plano without compensation for time, travel or expenses until he has documented his idea. Evan lives 3 hours from Plano. (I don't know from reading this if he has sold his car to pay legal expenses). He has also been ordered by the judge to write out his idea relating to DSC's product hardware (Zilog Z8000) as the machine executable binary code, rather than the Intel 8080 which Evan prefers.

How many hours a week did _Evan Brown_ work? Rather, ask if, legally, there was a single minute of any day when he was _not_ at work.

I know there are many Slashdot posters who respond to talk of collective bargaining and exploitation with cries of 'Wuss! Whiner! You go be a loser because we are tough and smart and better than most people and will take over the world by working 90 hours a week without compensation.' I would ask those people- have you read your contracts? Are you property, like Evan Brown's brain legally was? Can you set a price on that?

Evan Brown was employed as technical support for the Motorola Cellular Division software testing group. That is exactly the sort of job we're all talking about here, and now there is legal precedent in Texas law that if your employer slipped in details about owning your ideas during the time of employment- they can legally fire you, bankrupt you, sue you for the ideas and get the courts to go along with it and _compel_ you to reveal anything you claimed to have, whether or not they can prove that you invented it 'on their time'. Effectively, you can sign off on a contract that makes your brain property of the company, and the US Government will back it. If you do, the company could come after you ten years later claiming that your current invention was made during the time you worked for them- and with the Evan Brown case as case law, they could win, so even quitting a job with such conditions does not necessarily get you off the hook. The company could legally come after you years later demanding the contents of your mind or seizing ownership of your inventions, based on their prior ownership of your mind and thoughts- and win.

How's _that_ for an 80 hour week? :P