An anonymous poster 'The ABKCO Thieves' writes in about new hire paperwork.
I recently started work at a well-known e-commerce business, which is a great opportunity for me. Only after I started did I find out the full inventions, NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), non-poaching, and work-for-hire agreement is onerous. It treats any work of authorship during my employment as their property, even if done on my own time and equipment. I can't post the agreement because it would identify the company, and potentially me as well.
Earlier this year I began contributing code to a GPL v2 project that has existed for more than a decade. I want to continue to do so, but how can I without risking "contamination" of it thanks to this agreement? Part of my goal in contributing is to have real live code I can point to, so going under the radar defeats that purpose.
Are these sorts of intellectual property agreements common?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @08:34AM
Take the contract clauses that state that "any work you do during the term of your employment belongs to company" and strike it out, replacing it with "any work you do during the term of your employment on company time and/or company equipment belongs to company". Send the modified contract to their HR with a note to draw their attention to your changes, and see what happens.
In my case, the changes were accepted without company comment. I did this with two of the big IT labor companies in the USA, and one was a very software-centric company.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tangaroa on Tuesday September 13 2016, @08:28PM
In my case the company fired me, accused me of trying to steal their IP, called me a physical threat to the safety of other employees, banned employees from having contact with me, and told EDD that I had resigned so I could not draw unemployment compensation. All because I had asked for the removal of an arbitration clause in the new contract for my promotion.
The company was Edgewave. Normally I don't talk bad about past employers, but screw those guys.
(Score: 2) by gidds on Thursday September 15 2016, @02:25PM
Did you modify the contract after starting (and, presumably, after accepting the original contract)? That seems a dangerous approach.
(I've always had the contract amended and agreed before signing it and accepting the job, which should give them ample opportunity to address any problems beforehand.)
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