Worrying About Employment Contracts?

An anonymous reader wonders: "I was preparing to accept a software developer job at a California company and was put off by the contract which claimed ownership of any ideas I create (on my own time or at the company) during my stay at the company and required me to inform them of any ideas (related to the company or not) during my employment and for a year afterwards. I've found references to a couple of instances where this became a legal problem for the developer. Is this something to worry about?"

Comments

Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Carefully strike through the offending lines, initial them, and hand the contract like that back to the company. Now the ball is in their court. They can see what they (their lawyers) were asking is unreasonable, and initial the changes as well, or they can get back to you. Then negotiation starts. But whatever you do, don't just blithely sign it and think "oh, that'd never be a problem anyway". The very purpose of contracts existing is to make certain that things won't become problems.

Also consult California law.

[FooAtWFU]

CALIFORNIA LABOR CODE SECTION 2870
INVENTION ON OWN TIME - EXEMPTION FROM AGREEMENT

(a) Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee
shall assign, or offer to assign, any of employee's rights in an invention to employee's employer shall
not apply to an invention that the employee developed entirely on employee's own time without
using the employer's equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information except for those
inventions that either:

(1) 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
(2) Result from any work performed by the employee for the employer.

(b) To the extent a provision in an employment agreement purports to require an
employee to assign an invention otherwise excluded from being required to be assigned under
subdivision (a), the provision is against the public policy of this state and is unenforceable.

I turned this around once.

[marcus]

I was once handed a contract with a particularly abusive set of IP stipulations. Basically I swapped out all the references to employee and employer so that it said I would own the IP of all inventions of the company whether or not they were invented while I was at work, etc. and handed it back. He didn't flinch. He just looked at me sort of funny and took out the whole paragraph.

Ended up not working for that company, but that was because I'd gotten a better offer elsewhere.