Are NDA 'Prior Inventions' Clauses Safe to Sign?

BenderMan asks: "I own a small consulting company. Today I was asked by yet another corporate customer to sign an NDA with the increasingly popular 'Prior Inventions' clause. The gist of it is they want you to provide a list of all your past and current inventions and/or ideas so they can define and protect the intellectual property that they have hired you to build. Like many of us that lay awake at night, whilst the hamster wheel spins new ideas, I've got a number of un-patented works in various stages of development. Given that mutual NDAs only provide one year of protection, I don't feel obligated, nor do I have sufficient time and energy, to fully and properly document my inventions for an NDA. While these clauses are written with good intentions, the reality is that these valuable ideas would be placed in the hands of people that could potentially profit with impunity (Have you priced patents lately?). Unfortunately many companies are not willing to strike this clause from their contracts. Does Slashdot agree that this is a concern, and how have you dealt with these situations?"

Comments

Struck clauses

[Spazmania]

I ran in to this situation. The company made me the offer, we negotiated and I said yes. They handed me the contract to sign. I read it. The employment contract had some wording about helping them secure intellectual property rights following the end of my employment. It was badly worded: as spelled out it created an indefinate obligation to do work for free following employment. So I said, "Look, I see what you're getting at here but this is bad wording. We should tweak it a bit." They said, "No, everybody signs it."

Not everybody. I didn't. And a month later I got a much better job at a much better salary.

My advice to you is this: If you're not important enough that they're willing to negotiate the contract then you're not important enough and while you work there you'll never be important enough. Walk away. Its a bad deal.