Does Your Employer Own Your Thoughts?

MJ writes "Evan Brown has finally lost his 7 year court battle over ownership of thoughts in his brain. Judge Henderson of the 219th District Court in Collin County, Texas granted DSC Communications Corporation, Inc (now Alcatel, USA) a Final Judgement granting DSC ownership of Mr. Brown's idea of a reverse compiler that Mr. Brown claims to have begun formulating twelve years before his employment at DSC and during his off-time while at DSC. Mr. Brown has received media coverage in print, televion and on the Internet: The John Marshall Journal of Computer & Information Law, Wired, Computerworld. This rings similar to previous Slashdot articles on employer/employee IP rights."

Comments

He shouldn't have signed the contract.

[bretharder]

According to the article @ wired he signed a contract:

"The company said it owned Brown's idea because of a signed employment agreement requiring him to disclose any inventions he conceived of or developed while at the company."

Sadly right/wrong doesn't matter if it's legal...

Final proof the corporations have more rights

[Marxist Hacker 42]

than citizens. I personally hope this gets appealed to SCOTUS- and then I say if they uphold corporate rights over citzenry, we take that as a sign that it's time for a new revolution.

Re:Say it isn't so

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the exact reason I subtly screwed up a job offer by talking about all the stuff I worked on at home. The company that made the offer presented me with a huge contract to sign, with provisions that anything I worked on AT ANY TIME while employed by them was automatically owned by them. On top of that, I would be legally prevented from taking a job with any of their clients or their competitors for two years after leaving the company, if that were to ever happen. From their explaination, they said it was to prevent people from stealing their code. I thought this was ridiculess, and began asking more about it before signing. Then I started talking about creating my own company with the project that I did in school. Surprise surprise...they took the contract away from me and said that I could sign it another day. The next day when I called back, they suddenly had no need to hire anyone else at the time, so my offer was no longer on the table. Darn...

Re:Say it isn't so

[kisielk]

That's why you should keep a log, preferably a dated lab note book of any kind of research or work you do. If he had such a book that contained the history of his ideas and went back to before his employment at Alcatel, he would likely have been able to win this court case.

Re:Say it isn't so

[Kenja]

Every place I've worked that had a "we own your thoughts" clause also had a place to list prior work that was excluded from the contract. If he realy had this idea prior to signing he should have listed it as an exception.

Re:Say it isn't so

[matdavis]

This section I read from the judgment sounds to me as if his idea was exactly what he was supposed to be working on (thanks to Google's cache, and the bold is mine):

B. The Status of the Solution

Brown repeatedly claims there is a fact issue that the Solution was not an invention, or even a conception falling under the terms of the employment agreement. However, he claimed in his April 1996 memo to management, I have developed a method of converting machine executable binary code into high level source code form using logic and data abstractions. . . . Brown has not presented any other credible evidence to contradict this assertion.

Brown also claims Alcatel was not in the business of designing software, but was in the telecommunications business. Thus, the employment agreement is not applicable to the Solution. However, the evidence in the record establishes that Brown managed the group at Alcatel charged with maintaining and developing automated conversion tools for converting high-level code to low- level code. The record further shows that one of Brown's job functions was to manually convert Alcatel's existing low-level code to high-level code. The evidence shows Alcatel twice investigated automated conversion tools in 1993 and 1995. In addition, in 1993, Brown managed the employee charged with investigating the low-level to high-level automated code conversion process and received a status report on his research on October 18, 1993.

We do not believe the court below erred in concluding Alcatel, pursuant to the employment agreement, owns full legal right, title and interest to the process and/or method that is known as the Solution. We overrule Brown's first issue in its entirety.

Re:Say it isn't so

[Facekhan]

A non-compete agreement has to be limited in scope and reasonable and include some kind of consideration for it to be valid. In many cases overly broad NC agreements were limited by the judge deciding the case or in some cases thrown out altogether. Depending on what state you live in Non-compete agreements may be harder to enforce. In Maryland where I live, it is pretty much impossible to enforce them since it is the position of the state that you cannot be prevented from earning a living in your chosen profession. Now client poaching from your employer is somewhat unethical but not illegal. There is also nothing wrong with leaving your job to work directly for a client of theirs since that it just using the contacts you built up at your other job which is how people find good jobs. If you work for Oracle in and later you get a job as the IT purchasing manager or Database manager with a big client of theirs, Oracle is a fool if they cry foul about it.

For a non-compete to be valid it generally must be limited. It can't stop you from working in your field forever and anywhere. It has to specify a region of non-competition like the city the employer is in or the county. It also has to be for a limited and reasonable amount of time. And there has to be some consideration (ie money) coming to you in exchange for agreeing to this.

Remember there is no such thing as a "standard contract" in anything and if you don't like something in a contract ask them about it. If you have a specific project you don't want them to own then make them exclude that in the contract.

A lot of times companies barely look at their "standard contracts" and often there are some strange provisions that don't really match to the job. I got an intership and they gave me a contract that included ownership of inventions and an agreement to not hold any other job. Obviously a 3 day a week intership does not need such provisions. So I said they needed to change those things and they gave me a different contract.

Re:Help protest this ruling...

[0x0d0a]

California prevents employers from appropriating IP produced by workers in off hours.

Pennsylvania lacks such worker protection.

Some employers (such as my last one) require you to list all the works that you claim rights to when you *come to work* there. Theoretically, you're giving them rights to everything else you've produced.

It's absolutely asinine.

Re:Say it isn't so

[macdaddy]

My standard response when given any sort of contract is that I'll get back with them in a week after my attorney and I have had time to review the contract further. If they ask you why simply tell them that you are an IT professional, not a legal professional and want to cover your bases. You would be surprised how often that small assertion of your rights will benefit you in the long run. Don't bother signing a contract with any company that insists you sign it then and there or tries to dissuade you from having a lawyer refer the contract before signing it. Odds are they have something to hide. Also ask for copies of all paperwork that you need to sign for the employment in advance and take it with your contract to your lawyer. Companies tend to keep contractual clauses and restrictive policies separate from employment contracts. On average having an lawyer spend a hour with me to review my contract over lunch costs me about $50 plus lunch. I wouldn't consider doing it any other way.

Understand what you are agreeing to

[alien_blueprint]

... and be prepared to negotiate.

When changing jobs recently, I was offered an onerous IP agreement. I manage to get it amended without too much hassle - and not just for me, but (I'm told) for all future employees. Having been through this a couple of times before, it seems to me that the authors of such agreements grab everything they can by default, and will just fall over at the least sign of resistance.

You do have to be prepared to walk away. If you're not able to decline (for financial reasons, for example) and sign the thing anyway you really have no right to complain later. At the very least you should be aware of what you're agreeing to, so at least then you can choose not to develop particularly valuable IP in your own time and with your own resources. I was amazed by the number of people working for my new employer that didn't even know what they had signed.

You can blame the Supreme Court

[Hoi Polloi]

It all started with some rulings in the late 1800's.

Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886)
The substance of this case (a tax dispute) is of little significance, but several resources linked above detail how this fateful case subsequently was cited as precedent for granting corporations constitutional rights.

Noble v. Union River Logging Railroad Company (1893)
A corporation first successfully claims Bill of Rights protection (5th Amendment)

"Corporate Personhood"