Altrue said:
totesmagotes said:
In the contract they gave me, it says that they own any Intellectual Property I come up with during the course of my employment, even if it's in my off hours.
Serious question, is this even legal? If yes, is it legal-legal? So, would it hold against a judge?
In many states in the US, that is totally enforcible. The theory being that you have access to trade secrets of the business, and can't really “shut off” knowing about those when you're not in the office. Those US states also tend to allow enforcement of non-compete agreements, that say you can't work for a competitor (either listed or in same industry) within so much time of leaving the first company.
Obviously, those are terrible conditions for any knowledge worker, and you should not feel afraid to push back on the worst of those clauses. Or just move to California.
It turns out, California has made it explicitly unenforcible (can't really say “illegal” because this is a civil matter.) You are allowed to perform your trade even after leaving a competitor – non-competes are viewed as forbidding someone from actually doing the job they are trained for, which is viewed as a bad thing on the Left Coast. Similarly, California explicitly grants the IP of side projects, done off company hours, using no company resources, to the employee, not the employer. Most attempts to assert ownership over that by an employer would be thrown out of court before it even got to trial. (There are still some areas around “trade secrets” where you have to tread carefully, so check with a lawyer if you want a better view of it.)
Mysteriously, California business has not shriveled away and died off – instead, many economists credit this policy with having helped create the economic powerhouse of creativity that it is.
So, if you're not in California, you should first check what your state/country thinks about these clauses, and if they are enforcible, push back against it. They may say “this is standard for everyone,” to which you will counter “will I be given insight into everyones compensation and employment agrements to verify this, or is that just what you say?” Employment agreements may start out as “standard” but they are totally always negotiable. That's why they're not published on the company's website for all to see – they absolutely vary by candidate and employee. At a minimum, you can suggest that California companies do great without this clause, so it can't be the end of the world to drop it from your employment agreement.
I wish I had learned these things (and this negotiation tactic) much earlier in my career, but it is what it is. Of course, they can say “well, this position is pretty junior, so we don't need YOU specifically, so take it or leave it,” at which point you have to have a think about what you really want to do. Moving to California as an option? :-D
Oh, another little-known fact: It's explicitly illegal in the US, by US Federal law, for a company to have a policy that employees cannot discuss their compensation and working conditions with each other. A company may not in any way discriminate or retaliate against employees that do this. This is because labor unions couldn't work without this kind of discussion. The company may not like that this is the law, but it is. (Companies also don't like that it's the law that you can't spew too much poison into the air or water, but, you know, the law is there for a reason!)
(Trying to forestall political discussions, that should go into some other forum: I may sound like an ultra-liberal leftist here, but I'm really not. Corporations are an efficient way of arranging work and risk, free markets de-centralize a bunch of decisions that are better made be individuals than by bureaucrats, and capitalism is the least ineffective way of allocating resources in a way that can be productive for society that we're aware of. As long as we end up managing the external forces (externalities) that keep pushing those concepts into caricatures that end up being bad for We the people, rather than good. Managed Capitalism, if you will :-))
