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GitHub Now Lets Its Workers Keep the IP When They Use Company Resources For Personal Projects (qz.com)
If it's on company time, it's the company's dime. That's the usual rule in the tech industry -- that if employees use company resources to work on projects unrelated to their jobs, their employer can claim ownership of any intellectual property (IP) they create. But GitHub is throwing that out the window. From a report on Quartz: Today the code-sharing platform announced a new policy, the Balanced Employee IP Agreement (BEIPA). This allows its employees to use company equipment to work on personal projects in their free time, which can occur during work hours, without fear of being sued for the IP. As long as the work isn't related to GitHub's own "existing or prospective" products and services, the employee owns it. Like all things related to tech IP, employee agreements are a contentious issue. In some US states, it's not uncommon for contracts to give companies full ownership of all work employees produce during their tenure, and sometimes even before and after their tenure, regardless of when or how they produce it. These restrictions have led to several horror stories, like the case of Alcatel vs. Evan Brown.
Don't tell anyone you're working on something.
This is a crazy coincidence. I am expecting a job offer in 1.5 hours (the "next steps" call is scheduled at that time). I work in research, and I do not have a broad IP assignment agreement. However, extremely broad IP assignment agreements are the norm in my state. I have already decided that I will not take this job if it requires signing a broad IP assignment agreement. Does anyone have experience negotiating this? I would be returning to production software development on a core implementation team. Are IP agreements negotiable? Do companies just refuse any exceptions?
I struggle a bit to understand why this isn't a bigger issue. I mean, I understand why employers would want to own anything employees create -- free labor, ability to quash disruptive technology, and all that -- but when so many political noises are made about innovation, and you have company policies that clearly disincentivize it on the part of individuals, I wonder why some politician hasn't attempted to differentiate themselves by even mentioning the stifling effect on innovation such policies impose.
As an engineer, I'd think that more similarly inclined people would want to have at least an opportunity to pursue non-work related projects on their own time, but I guess I'm in the minority. Actually, I suppose that pretty much addresses my own question; after all, if essentially nobody is complaining, then there's no reason to call into question exploitative, innovation-quashing practices.
Anyway, good on GitHub for doing this.
"Is not a sentence" is not a sentence. Well damn.
Keeping an IP? I thought DNS solves the problem entirely.
I solved this problem at my last two employers by releasing everything with open source licenses. That way it doesn't matter as much who the copyright holder is.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Why would any company allow ex-employees to keep their IP address?
[...] void the contract you signed stating that if you invent something that it belongs to them [...]
I worked at a company that wanted everyone to sign a revised NDA that included company ownership of not just existing ideas at work but also past and future copyrights and trademarks. The entire department nearly walked out because everyone had extensive copyrights and trademarks that has nothing to do with the company. HR intervened and told legal to back off on the revised NDA.
Really? I guess it depends a lot on the country etc, but in NZ/Aus/UK I was under the impression that ownership of all employee generated IP, even outside work time and unrelated to company activities, was the default position. Having said that it is a while since I have signed an employment contract.
There is no such thing as intellectual property.
sometimes even before and after their tenure , regardless of when or how they produce it
Emphasis mine. Now provide cites and back it up.
how does that even work? I can at least understand that if you are at your cubicle being paid a salary and you're working on your "next big thing", I can see why a company would claim ownership over it. They paid for it after all.
But what you do outside of that cubicle on your own time is your own business, not theirs. And worse, how can they claim retroactive ownership over something you made before you even joined the company?
Are there seriously no programming jobs available in your country that you feel compelled to sign such an absurd agreement?
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Admittedly, I've been lucky with the job I've had the past several years. I've been developing an inventory management system and ecommerce platform for my day-job, but the underlaying libraries are shared with personal projects of mine. Company owner agreed the underlaying libraries are my property, not the company's, because I develop them on my free time for personal sites too. It basically has become a shared resource for both that I get to retain.
I know this isn't the norm in the industry. But I'm glad that GitHub is getting on board closer to this idea!
That's happened a couple times with me. What I did was cross out the terms I didn't like, initial and date them and return the form. One time they simply counter signed and filed them, the other they didn't like it but after I told them that was the contract I'd sign, they did as well.
Never sign away anything you haven't been paid to do.
Yes, it stipulated inventions, patents, manufacturing processes - those sorts of things. But it most certainly made clear it was a blanket coverage, not limited to products or industries the company was involved in.
One time I had a very onerous employment contract (i.e., $500 per day penalty for failing to turn in a proper two week notice) that an East Coast labor attorney drew up without checking California law. When a push came to a shove, I told the company to review the contract with a California labor attorney and discovered that it would be thrown out of a California court in five minutes. The contractor for the project ended up buying out my contract from the subcontractor and I signed a regular employment contract with them..
An v4 IP might be worth something; v6, not so much...
It's easy to do your own programming on your own computer. It's only through the trap of sloppiness one would use their employer's equipment. That's one reason it's nice the California law focuses on that: make some minimal effort to partition your life, and in return get some (unfortunately minimal) protection. Likewise, "free time" for someone on salary is meaningless. The problem is entirely "existing or prospective," which this policy doesn't seem to change from the California baseline. It's onerous because:
- you are likely to be interested in similar things to your work, otherwise you wouldn't have taken the job.
- for large companies the category is incredibly broad. For example, at Google it would cover basically anything, so the pattern of discretion that their judgement committee exercises determines how onerous this rule is, not the law, and not the policy.
Well, this may be something that is more unique to GitHub (and similar companies - GitLab, BitBucket, etc) where the companies product is something it's employees would like to use on their own for their own projects. Essentially, if they were an employee of GitHub under most normal policies they wouldn't be able to use GitHub for their personal work or contributing to projects hosted by GitHub as that would be using "company resources". So the change is slight in that it is really just allowing their employees to use their product - which has become a standard in the industry - for the employee's personal works without GitHub being able to claim ownership of random things.
And in all honesty, when I talk to employers about jobs I make sure to have something similar - I have my own projects that I am working on, and while I avoid using company resources for those projects, I still want clarity that it's mine and the company can't take it or I don't sign.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
I struggle a bit to understand why this isn't a bigger issue. ... I wonder why some politician hasn't attempted to differentiate themselves by even mentioning the stifling effect on innovation [company-owns-all-your-inventions] policies impose.
Because it's already been adressed, long ago.
GitHub is in San Francisco, which is in California and governed by California labor law.
California labor law says that (paraphrasing from memory):
- As a compelling state interest
- overriding anything in the employee agreement
- if an employee invents something
- while not on company time or using company resources
- and that invention is not in the company's current or immediately foreseeable business
- then the invention belongs to the employee
- (and the employment agreement must include a copy of this information as an appendix.)
(IMHO that law is THE reason for the explosive growth and innovation in Silicon Valley and why other states have been unable to clone it. Invent something that your current company won't use, get together with a couple friends, maybe get some "angel funding", rent the office across the street, and go into business with your new shiny thing. So companies bud off new companies like yeast. And innovators collect where they can become the inventor, the "couple of friends", or the early hires, creating a pool of the necessary talent to convert inventions into companies when they happen.)
What GitHub has apparently done is say to the employees:
"For the purposes of us claiming your IP, your lunch time and breaks are your time, even on company property, and your use of our computers and disk storage for things like compiles, storing code, and web research in aid of your project, does not count as 'using company resources'."
In other states, and other companies even within CA, that might be a big deal. For a company in CA, whose whole business model is providing archives for other people's software projects - and giving it away free to small groups, while charging large groups (or small groups that grow into large groups), it's not a big deal, and right IN their business model.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I've had a company try this to me as well. Simply just crossed it out. They didn't even bat an eye.
Seriously, a contract is an agreement that BOTH sides agree to. Far too many people just accept the terms 'as-is' not realizing that it works both ways. There has to be mutual agreement -- if you don't have that, you don't have a contract.