

Ask HN: Does every pet project you launch belong to your employer? - throwawaytaken

I know I have legal agreements to re-read and the local legislation around IP to study, but seeing how I&#x27;m the opposite of a lawyer and until I find one: Do default IP regulations state that anything you produce at any time or place belongs to your employer? That&#x27;s what I keep hearing from my friends<p>If the subject is too broad: Is there anything that can happen against an open source project released personally while working at a company?<p>PS. Located and employed in eastern Europe
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Relic22799
I'm pretty sure regulations varies by state. I also think it varies per
employer. In states where the wording is vague, some companies will slip in
specific language/wording into their NDA and employee policies to cover their
bases. Whether those policies will hold up in court is another matter, but it
could be an added headache.

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nostrademons
Consult a lawyer. This is complicated, and depends upon location, your
project, and your employer's lines of business. In the absence of that,
though, a conservative approximation is that yes, everything you launch
belongs to your employer.

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trhtrhth
What "default IP regulations" are you talking about? Are there any in eastern
Europe?

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throwawaytaken
I have no idea, that's why I'm asking

PS. IP is intellectual property if that's what you're asking
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property)

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jesusmichael
The legal test of what IP would belong to your employer is that if the IP you
developed was at the direction and expense of your employer. By expense, would
also mean if you used knowledge gained specifically by working for your
employer.

That is usually interpreted to mean... That you are building competing or
complementing products to your employers.

For example if you build a great CRM system... And you work for a company that
builds a word processor... They probably dont have a claim.... But if you
build a specialized font system... They would probably have a claim based on
the fact that you used knowledge gained by working with them.

