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How to protect Intellectual Property from new employer (midwest.social)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Pretty sure I will be asking a lawyer, but I want to learn more words and concepts first.

A possible new job wants to own any intellectual property I create and wants me to declare anything I want to keep as my own. This seems normal in my industry as they will be paying me to do some thinking.

Issue is that I have a number of ideas I have been developing. I am going to float some of them as products in my own time, though this may be years from now. Most of these are outside the current market for the company as far as I know.

How is this typically handled? I presume I don't need to have copyrights or trademarks prior and can just list tentative titles.

I am also a little unclear on the spread between "intellectual property" and "an idea I am playing with".

Thoughts? Concepts to investigate?

Edit: I did Internet search this, but I have not found working keywords.

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 10 months ago (2 children)

NAL, but have heard of these. Amazon was really bad about it a few years ago.

General rule, anything you do on company time/devices/premises is theirs. That is enforceable for sure, and it's provable.

Anything you do in your own time is generally unenforceable, unless you still code/materials or something from them. Caveat being that it can't conflict with your work. i.e. if you work for Expedia and start a new travel company you may be in an enforceable grey area, "They stole company secrets to compete with us". However if you work for a game company and make your own game, you're probably fine.

Read your contract, know it upside down and sideways, that's going to be the guiding principal.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Anything you do in your own time is generally unenforceable

With the important caveat that your employment contract may include clauses that give them rights over that stuff anyway, and even if they're unenforceable you could still end up having to fight in court over it.

Definitely something to keep in mind when reading the contract over, and ideally get a lawyer to take a look. It can be expensive, but weigh that expense against the potential expense of what would happen if you get screwed over.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

Yeah that's the bit I remember when Amazon was launching their game studio. It was deep in the fine print that anything you built even on your own time was owned by them, and they got flamed pretty hard by it to remove it. Important to always check for that crap, it's usually unenforceable, but remember by unenforceable I mean "You're going up against your company's lawyers. You'd probably win, if you put up a ton of your own money to fight that the contract shouldn't be valid in court with your own high price lawyers"

[–] shyguyblue 15 points 10 months ago

This is correct. Anything you make on company equipment, or on company time, is owned by the company.

You want to work on your own stuff, had to be off the clock and off company property.