> they thought for some reason they owned everything
> I created, at any time, ever (sorry, no)
How common is this? I have yet to encounter it, but if I did I'd consider it an enormous red flag. It sends some very strong messages:
- We lack the respect for you to even be subtle about
leveraging the asymmetry of our power relationship in
order to try to fuck you.
- None of your potential future colleagues here are likely
to be passionate about their craft, because people who enjoy
making things of their own don't sign our contract.
I'm aware that employers are often willing to compromise about things like that during negotiations, but by that point the message has surely been sent.
Pretty common in BigCorp land. The problem is that many of these IP Agreements are very badly worded. The spirit is that you should not take work you do for your employer and turn around and create a product that directly or indirectly competes with them in the same industry.
I'm not sure how enforceable these agreements are. Like anything with our legal system in the US, they're used often to bully people into submission with the threat of legal action, regardless of the company's actual intent. In California, there's a wide range of employee protection laws in place that would make these difficult, if not impossible to enforce. Not sure about elsewhere in the country. (standard IANAL disclaimer applies)
One place I worked at had a pretty boilerplate IP Agreement. I worked with them to change some of the wording so it was less vague. There is often a section on these things where you can provide "prior inventions" that are excluded from the agreement. I took the opportunity to list every idea (as vaguely as possible) I might want to pursue in during the expected course of my employment.
I've only looked at 4 employment contracts for software companies, but all of them included some term claiming ownership of everything the employee creates at any time. In California this is unenforceable in specific circumstances. I also didn't worry about the two companies based in Texas and Massachusetts trying to enforce this, since it seems to be pretty standard.
My employer for my current day job (~70k employees) pretty much says this in their 17 page contract. It was a big warning sign for me when considering the offer, but I know that many other major corporations do this.
As a result, I have to take extra care not to "release" anything I create on the side, which is frustrating because I have always enjoyed working on side projects. Realistically though, it's unlikely for the company to claim ownership over any of these petty/small projects; but I'm sure if you released something that gained a lot of traction, especially something that competes with them, they would pounce on it.
For many corporations, the legalese related to things you create while under the employ of said corporation is rather extensive. Truth be told, there is a lot of boilerplate in there and most corporations are really only interested in stuff that competes with them, so it's more for defensive purposes than anything else.
That said, the language used is rather deep and entirely one-sided to the benefit of the employer. I would be surprised if any major corporation didn't have a clause of that nature in their standard agreements.
This is very common. I think the key is that most of them wouldn't bother acting on it, UNLESS you were successful and for me, that was the biggest reason I was afraid it -- it scared me to start anything at risk for success.
Of course its a red flag, but when you're coming out of college, being told that jobs are hard to come by, do you really have balls to throw out red flagged opportunities? It's up to us as individuals to know and accept it as a stepping stone rather than a career.
