Slashdot Mirror
Apple Claims Ownership of Shareware
(54)T-Dub writes "Cricket Media recently released 'Netflix Fanatic', an OSX based shareware app that lets you manage your rental queue without logging on to Netflix. An article on Think Secret reveals the reason behind it's mysterious disappearance. Apparently the developer's employer, Apple, has claimed ownership over the application's name and source code. The developer claims that under Section 2870 of the California Labor Code this is illegal. The law states that if a company has an employment agreement with provisions saying employees must assign the rights of their inventions to their employer, those sections do not apply if the employee developed it on his or her own time, without using the employer's equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information. Within Apple, there's unsubstantiated speculation that Apple wants to include the Netflix Fanatic code in a new version of Sherlock." Also, they're presumably not too worried with employee morale.
I hate to say it, but that's how it works. Companies do this all the time and I'm sure apple will make it right.
Let's take the Stickies application written by Jens Alfke for example:
You can read the whole story about how Jens wrote the stickies program as an Apple employee and had it claimed as Apple's while they made sure it was dealt with at the same time here.
-davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
This was discussed a while ago on MacSlash. The author directly wrote in apparently.
Here's the link: Employer Grabs Netflix Fanatic Software From Creator
And I'll say it again:
.... to the employer's business.
:(
Section 2870 does *NOT* protect you if you're a software developer. Check out sub section 1. It includes an exemption for the company if your invention relates at the time of conception
The company's case against you is pretty straighforward: "We're in the business of making and selling software. Your invention is software. Hand it over."
And they don't even have to pat you on the head for writing it.
I hope homeboy has more luck trying to exert his rights under the CLC than other people who've fallen for it have had.
Because the boilerplate agreements that employees sign these days almost always have something in them to that effect. It's evil; it's also, in most cases, a condition of getting (or keeping) a job, and with the tech economy the way it is, most programmers will sign away the rights to their firstborn if it means getting paid enough.
... Does it suck? Hell yeah. Is there anything I can do about it? Not if I want a job and a degree.
I have to worry about this kind of thing all the time. I work in biotech, and am a grad student in comp. bio.; although the applications I develop for school are in a somewhat different field than those I develop for work, it's conceivable that my employer could lay claim to some of my academic work -- and, of course, that my school could lay claim to just about anything I do. By and large, I trust both my boss and my professors, but
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Hell...I had one company offer me a job with the conditions that 1) anything I code, at any time, belongs to them, 2) any ideas I have, at any time, belongs to them, 3) in the event the I leave the company, I would not work in any field that competes with them for at least 2 years. The theory behind the "any time" clause was that I *might* be influenced by my work and create something using that influence, therefore it was in their best interest to claim everything. The non-competition clause is standard, but if I had taken the job then I wouldn't have been able to take any programming job for 2 years considering their software *could possibly* be used in many fields. The entire contract was written to make sure they owned you. Someone could fight a lot of it in court, but considering you wouldn't have a job it would be hard to pay for a lawyer. I pity the poor bastards that work at that place...the entire thing was family-owned and run, and they worked 12 hour days. And they expected you to keep up with them when needed, which was pretty much all the time. Some jobs just aren't worth taking, no matter how desparate you are.
Why should he have to hide his identity if he's not doing anything wrong?
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
OverlyBroadIntellectualPropertyAgreements discusses exactly this sort of problem.
The "Fine Arts Waiver" described on the page is definitely something I will not work without. With some companies it's just a matter of asking for it.
Sunlit World Scheme. Weird and different.
As it has been pointed out there are exceptions to that clause.
The rest of the clause is
"
and (a) which does not relate (1) to the business of the employer or (2) to the employer's actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development, or (b) which does not result from any work performed by the employee for the employer. Any provision which purports to apply to such an invention is to that extent against the public policy of this state and is to that extent, void and unenforceable."
I mod down any one who says "I'm sure I will get modded down for this"
Ironic that the initial formation of Apple was initially threatened because Woz was working for HP when he invented the Apple I! A supervisor at HP inspected the Apple I and deemed it insignificant enough as to not be a threat...
Except that such contracts contravene most state and federal labor laws. And, if you read the original Slashdot article, or the original web site describing the dispute (which the author of Netflix Fanatic took down recently), you'd know that Apple is probably in the wrong, as they appear to be violating California labor law. Granted, I am not a lawyer, and I don't have all the facts (and neither do you), but such broad contracts assigning all of an employee's IP to their employer are in fact illegal in many areas. That doesn't stop employers from putting such clauses into contracts, but it doesn't make them valid or enforceable either. Quite the opposite.
Stop rubber-stamping legal abuses by corporate lawyers!
Except that I spoke to the shareware author for this app back when this started weeks ago (before Slashdot picked this up, before the Netflix Fanatic website got recently altered to omit mention of the specific laws), and the author never said, "Oops! You're right!" He pulled the application pending negotiations with his employer's legal department. At the time, I had no idea this guy was working for Apple.
Paraphrasing from the private e-mail that Cricket (the shareware app's author) gave me, he said his employer was making their claims based on 2870 (a) 1, but that this was a sham, and they had no interest other than in putting the application on a shelf and never doing anything with it. Therefore, they're in the wrong. Since the author can't afford to fight this for several reasons, justice will not prevail.
IANAL, but no employer has ever won a court case on these IP agreements, even when the software was developed for the company on company time and on company computers.
This is completely and utterly wrong. The norm is to enforce these provisions in favor of the employer, except in the most egregious cases and absent local statute to the contrary (like California's). Provisions that require assignment of all inventions (created at home or at work) are also very often enforced.
I'm not going to bother giving any cites, but I will point you to this interesting article by Rob Merges, which he published back in 1999, entitled "The Law and Economics of Employee Inventions." In the beginning of the article, it gives the default rules on employee inventions (i.e., the rules that apply when no contract exists), and then talks a bit about what happens when an explicit contract does exist. (Hint: there's a reason why that subsection is called "the (almost complete) primacy of contract.")
Btw, the interesting part is the law and econ analysis that makes up the meat of Rob's article. (At least, it's interesting to me.)