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How to protect Intellectual Property from new employer
(midwest.social)
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this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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Asklemmy
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NAL, but have heard of these. Amazon was really bad about it a few years ago.
General rule, anything you do on company time/devices/premises is theirs. That is enforceable for sure, and it's provable.
Anything you do in your own time is generally unenforceable, unless you still code/materials or something from them. Caveat being that it can't conflict with your work. i.e. if you work for Expedia and start a new travel company you may be in an enforceable grey area, "They stole company secrets to compete with us". However if you work for a game company and make your own game, you're probably fine.
Read your contract, know it upside down and sideways, that's going to be the guiding principal.
With the important caveat that your employment contract may include clauses that give them rights over that stuff anyway, and even if they're unenforceable you could still end up having to fight in court over it.
Definitely something to keep in mind when reading the contract over, and ideally get a lawyer to take a look. It can be expensive, but weigh that expense against the potential expense of what would happen if you get screwed over.
Yeah that's the bit I remember when Amazon was launching their game studio. It was deep in the fine print that anything you built even on your own time was owned by them, and they got flamed pretty hard by it to remove it. Important to always check for that crap, it's usually unenforceable, but remember by unenforceable I mean "You're going up against your company's lawyers. You'd probably win, if you put up a ton of your own money to fight that the contract shouldn't be valid in court with your own high price lawyers"
This is correct. Anything you make on company equipment, or on company time, is owned by the company.
You want to work on your own stuff, had to be off the clock and off company property.