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from the better-don-your-asbestos-undergarments dept.
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: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday September 13 2016, @12:42PM
Yes, onerous, unconsciable agreements are common. It's like they want to know how scared, desperate, and wimpy you are, and how hard they can swing the whips. Also how much of a noob you are, and whether you even read the agreement or just blindly signed it in naive trust that it couldn't be too bad. If you don't push back at all, you mark yourself as meat they can grind up in their sweatshop. They won't want to have you on any teams that negotiate deals with other companies, they'll worry that you will give away the store.
Also, they are composed of many people, and the rest of the company may well disagree with the crazy unfair expectations their own lawyers try to push on everyone. They hope you will object to the outrageous provisions. Ever heard of any group of engineers actually liking HR? No, it's Catbert vs the serfs.
Should it be like this? It sets an adversarial tone to the employer-employee relationship. Not good. We ought to have acceptable standard agreements for employment contracts, readily available online.
Might be worth writing our politicians about this sort of thing. Especially if you are in one of those Right-to-Work states.