Beware Employment Contracts

elfdump writes "Tilly, one of the Perl Monks, has been threatened with lawsuits from his employer for performing open-source development. His company claims ownership on all of the GPL'd work he has performed since he was hired, including rights to portions of the Carp and Exporter modules. In addition to his code being pulled, Tilly's revolutionary ideas on regular expression engines (1, 2) may now never be fulfilled. In this statement, Tilly warns open-source developers of the dangers of the "work for hire" provision in contracts, which entitles a company to all of its employee's intellectual products, regardless of their applicability to the company or whether or not the ideas were developed on work time. Definitely something to consider if you perform OSS development." One thing to clarify: your employer does not own everything you do by law - only by the contract you may have signed. Brief rant below.

A lot of people think they have no negotiating ability. You do. When you're thinking of signing on with some company, and they send you a boiler-plate contract to sign, don't just sign it and send it back. Read it carefully. Alter it as you see fit, striking out sections, adding sections, and initialing each change. Then sign it, make a copy for yourself, and send it back.

Where it says:

company owns the rights to all work produced during the term of employment

Just strike it out, and change it to:

company owns the rights to code written during working hours and in direct furtherance of any tasks assigned by the company

See how much nicer that reads? Now, when you do this, there are two possibilities: either the company will ignore it and hire you, or they will object to your alteration of the contract. In the second case, if they stand firm on the boiler-plate contract, I suggest you simply ask for more money - for instance, if you were expecting an 8 hour/day job and their contract asserts that they own what you do 24 hours/day, then you'll need at least three times as much salary to compensate.

And if you and the company cannot reach an agreement, well, maybe you didn't want to work for them anyway. If they're already screwing you before you've even signed on, that's not a good omen.

There's already some good advice in the comments on the perlmonks story, so I'll leave it at that.

I would like to know the name of the company.

[Sivar]

No reason. }:>

No frigging way.

[Espressoman]

Such a thing is obscene. No amount of money will convince me to sign over every piece of intellectual property (what ever that may be in this context) I generate during the contract term. We are meant to be hiring out our brains, not selling them into bonded labour. What do they expect people to do, turn off our brains when we aren't at work? Crazy.

I checked my contract before signing...

[stupkid]

And my employer (A fortune five company) had no problem with me owning the code that I write on my own time. I can't imagine that any employer would unless they are planning on screwing you.

The funny part is that my current employer is very liberal with the licensing on my code and their environment is not very Linux friendly. My former employer was a .com Linux shop they were very adamant about owning all of my code. Guess who is paying me more?

;)

You don't own your rant

[Disco Stu]

Dude, I think your employer owns your Perlmonks rant, too. I hope they don't change it.

microsoft sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

now mod me up

Re:Argh..

[dnight]

After one stellar 2 day-long interview, I had decided I didn't want to work for (company A). They gave me an employment contract similar to what's described above. I just took it home and burned it in the fireplace, and said my attorney was reviewing it when I was called the next day.

Upon hearing my lack of interest in the position the day after that, they spent two weeks harassing me for the unsigned contract, and eventually claimed the printed copy was "company property" and I was legally bound to return it, next-day air, to them, and threatened me with a lawsuit. (This was a law firm, btw). Phone calls stopped, letters came, kept me in stuff to burn for 2 months.

Lawyers suck.

Does that mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that UPS gets to take credit for packages you smash on your days off, too? :-)

If you hate your job anyways...

[dghcasp]

Some places I worked in the past had Employment Contracts that gave the company full rights to "... any intellectual property, inventions or creations made during the period of employment." [wording more or less.]

I often thought that if I really wanted to quit and didn't care about a good reference, I'd take my camera to the local zoo and shoot several rolls of, er..., animal droppings, then lay out a book of photos of these, er... products of nature. And, since the company has all IP rights, put them down as the author.

It'd all be worth it when HR got the pre-press of the glossy coffe table book of Products, by Joe's Software, with the big picture of a turd on the cover.

Re:Scary

[Zurk]

yup. join the club of people who release GPL software anonymously.
although in my case it was a fear of being sued for reverse engineering stuff from multiple companies.

Re:Argh..

[rjamestaylor]

should have sent the ashes. each time.

The only thing worse than lawyers are those who use them.

Re:Argh..

[Capsaicin]

My employer doesn't own the kitchen addition I made for my mother.

Have you read the fine print of your employment contract? Maybe you have and maybe your employer doesn't own your mother's kitchen, but I have seen employment contracts in which the employer claimed rights to all creative work of the employee, whether or not directly related to the employment task ... so be careful not to write the Great American Novel whilst under the term of such employ

Re:I checked my contract before signing...

[Anonymous Coward]

It means they're one of the five largest Fortune Cookie manufacturers.

Re:or in Washington

[Supa Mentat]

Dude, you admitted to working for M$ on /. and made no excuses for it! How do you walk with balls that big?

Re:Argh..

[npietraniec]

And you got modded as flamebait... Oh the irony

If any code you write belongs to the company...

[jgbrown]

If any code you write belongs to the company then why don't you write a Windows virus/worm. Then let the company claim ownership of it. Possibly even GPL the virus. It would be interesting if this happened.
If you are not prepared to go that far, write a program with some errors/security holes (buffer overflows, etc...) If the compant asks about it, tell the company that it is something you wrote in your own time and not to use it.

Re:Argh..

[DEBEDb]

On the other hand, feel free to create
a very controversial work that your employer
will have the rights to. A porn movie,
perhaps.

Re:One thing-- overtime

[DuranDuran]

> Pirating software is like stealing crack from a drug dealer and pretending that it makes you free from addiction.

Of course this is rubbish - crack'll screw me up. Software won't. Even if I buy my crack from the government or whoever makes it, it'll still screw me up.

An incorrect .sig is still incorrect.

Re:Scary

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod this down if you will, but what idiot modded the original post up to 5 and called it "insightful" ?

You ARE aware that using a pseudonym to release code you're not legally allowed to is about as clever and legal as wearing a Potato Head Mask while robbing a bank?

Re:slavery

[ignavus]

It's something else entirely, something new and hostile to ideals we've held for over 225 years.

The term "business fascism" leapt to my mind when I read your post.

Re:Read your contracts

[the grace of R'hllor]

Section 14
1)
The boss' firstborn daughter, on her 18th birthday, shall be delivered to me while in a cake and wearing a teddy.
2)
[more of the same]