

Ask HN: IP, employment contracts and side projects - nobuwa

I'm employed at xxx big IT consulting company. I was hired out of college as an "associate project manager" last year, but have never been given any projects. I work less than 5 hours a week for a full-time salary. I would like to start a niche website on the side, which will produce revenue from google ads. This site will not be in any way related to my employer's buisiness, or any project I've been associated with through my day job.<p>What should I be considering given that I signed a  fairly restrictive contract when I started this job? How standard for the industry is the contract I signed? Does my employer really own all the IP I produce while on salary? Will I have to quit my job to start this website? Is this a cut and dry legal issue or does it also have to do w/ my company's history of litigation on past similar issues?<p>And is there a differentiation between my for-profit idea, and any other side projects I do which are free and open source?<p>Thats a lot of questions.... thanks in advance.
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ig1
By and large it doesn't matter what the contract says, if they don't like what
you're doing they may just sue you anyway. What the contract says will affect
the outcome of the court case, but that doesn't matter, in the large scheme of
things once you're into the realm of your employer suing you you've lost
already.

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nobuwa
Yeah, I realize that if litigation starts, it means, I lose, no matter what
the outcome. I would need to make sure to avoid this at all costs... either by
avioding the issue of the contract altogether or by hoping that they wouldn't
find the site and put 2 + 2 together. (I think that no matter what this seems
likely -it won't be a google killer or anything, if the company found out
about it at all it would probably be random)

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nobuwa
It says.... any and all work created by me... while employed... will be owned
by XXX company....

Is that the clause I should be looking at? It doesn't seem like there are any
explicit exceptions to this written into the contract.

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rpledge
I'd recommend you talk to a lawyer that is familiar with employment contract
law in your area. My experience has been that companies will put unenforcable
restrictions in contracts because they know 99% of people will never check if
the restriction can be enforced. It doesn't cost the company anything to add
the clause but they benifit from it anyway.

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nobuwa
yeah, that was the main gist of my question: What makes such a clause
enforceable or unenforceable? Is that speaking in terms of legality, or that
it's simply impractical to do so?

I would really like to hear from some other HNers on this: Are you already
well aware of the ramifications of the contract you signed before you begin
work on side projects, (and maybe even demanded changes to a contract before
you signed) or do you forge ahead w/ the knowledge that the "any and all"
clause (or whatever) is unenforceable? - this assumes you are not violating
any non-competes -it's just a question of IP.....

It seems unlikely to me that every engineer w/ side projects hires a lawyer to
go through his/her employment contract before they sign it.... What's best
practice when dealing w/ a contract both before you sign it?

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zeusTheTrueGod
Just make it anonymous or use a fake person. May be you can register
everything(domain name,trademark) on your wife or you cat. Also you can join
an open source project.It's your life, by the way. It cann't belong to your
company

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ryduh
A lot of it depends on the actual contract you signed. I would take a look at
that to start off. Maybe post your findings back here if you feel open.

