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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] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

As a freelancer I got so much more respect than I got as an employee.

As a freelancer I come and go as I please, immediately have the ear of any c-level executive, and get paid a hell of a lot more. And just generally speaking, everyone in the company, all the way to the top, treats me like their superior.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

That is really cool. I guess there is a big split between freelancer and contract employee.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

The only really bad part I found is that I went from actually doing tech most of the time... to doing tech some of the time. Now most of my effort is spent on business development, and maybe 20% of my time is spent chasing after people who don't pay on time. I'm lucky if I can spend 1/3 of my time doing actual tech stuff.

...of which half is probably writing documentation for some horrible thing that should not be, that only I will ever read. I don't mind doing this though. If I ever get a job to fix it again, I look like a pro and can charge a really fair rate :P