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from the we-won't-steal-your-ideas-honest dept.
"Read the terms and conditions" is good advice for anybody, but especially if you're participating in a hackathon. Otherwise, as participants in a Telstra hackathon are finding, you might be giving up more than you intend.
Lifx engineer Jack Chen – @chendo on Twitter – has noticed that the terms in the carrier's Internet of Things challenge seem to go beyond what people might expect if they're not paying attention.
The contract (PDF) that challenge participants have to sign contains a clause which seems to the non-lawyer to go far beyond what someone might develop for the hackathon itself.
The document seems to plant Telstra's flag in a participant's development work not just during the challenge, but for the following 18 months.
For any "New IP" (as the contract puts it) developed in that period, the participant agrees to:
- Give Telstra a first right of refusal
- Negotiate with Telstra about possible licensing
- Not offer the IP to anyone else without Telstra having had the first refusal
- If someone else is interested, give Telstra a chance to make a matching offer
- Not give anyone else an exclusive on the IP until after Telstra's said "no".
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 30 2015, @04:47PM
That much is reasonable. Demanding an exclusive license is not. Reaping an idea or ten from any hackathon is cool. Requesting permission to use an idea is cool. If the author demands a licensing fee, and both parties agree to that fee, we're still cool. But demanding that license be exclusive is not cool. Especially not cool if they decide to close the source, and try to force the author to sign an NDA.
And, they still get the opportunity to recruit talent, with or without any licensing agreements.