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

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 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] 22 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I actually have a friend who's involved in a situation like this right now. He got laid off from his old job a few months back and while he was job hunting he started working on a project with a couple other friends that could be worth a fair bit of money. He's had job offers since then and he got a lawyer to write up a description of the project he's working on that could be inserted into those "I'm keeping the rights to this stuff" contract sections.

It's a bit different for him because it's stuff that he's actively working on right now, though. It sounds like your case might be simpler, if it's stuff you haven't done yet and don't plan to try working on while employed with this current employer I suspect you won't need to worry about it. Though of course, IANAL.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

That is great. Thank you are sharing. I was hoping the solution was that direct.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Is the former employer of your friend trying to claim ownership of the project after laying him off??

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

No, that's not the concern here. He's getting job offers from new employers while he's midway through this personal project, and he wants to make sure the new employers don't have anything in their employment contracts that would end up grabbing it.

The old employers trying to claim it was also a concern, but that wasn't what OP was concerned about so I didn't mention it. He had a lawyer check over his old employment contract as well to make sure there wasn't a problem there. As long as he's not using proprietary tech retained from the old job (and he's not) there's no problem there.