[kaosjester]

- In some places, yes. It varies from state to state and company to company, but most companies outside of California try to do this to you. (In California, this clause is illegal.)

- Move to California or negotiate a different contract. (It depends on if your employer wants a cut, how far they are willing to litigate, and if they can show they missed out on economic growth that you made (depending on the contract clause); you should always ask permission, even before contributing to open-source projects.)

- Yes, it is. While it is unclear if Carmack actually stole code from Zenimax, the actual evidence is easy to construe in Zenimax's favor, e.g., Carmack backed up all of his emails, many of which included attachments of VR code, before he quit, and the Oculus founder had an NDA with Zenimax while working on VR with them before starting the Oculus kickstarter. (I'm not sure about the situation with the rocket hobby.)

- Obviously this is the answer: talk to both internal and external council, and remember that internal council will be the people suing you if they get unhappy.

[ploxiln]

I've worked in California. The standard employment contracts usually do include all the clauses, but then add something like "if any of these clauses is not considered legal in this jurisdiction, they are considered not to apply and the rest of this legal agreement stands".

Basically, the professional lawyers leave it up to you to figure out what parts of the contracts are real and which are fake. I hate it. I feel it's a bit like making a lawyer figure out what parts of this C program are "undefined behavior" and if they're wrong in my favor I don't correct them. "Yeah, this is all pretty standard code, these programs are usually a few tens of thousands of lines, don't worry about that part." But it's just them doing the best they can for their clients the easiest way they can ... just in case it helps, standard practice and all that ...

[seanp2k2]

Hah, good analogy. Then you say "ooh and by the way, the code will be interpreted by one person with a pretty good understanding of C but with possible political motivations if the case matters a lot, and the ultimate decision will come down to people with not much understanding of how C works, but they'll have some other people give them a sheet of paper explaining the relevant parts."

[mikesmith112]

That is one advantage from working with machines.

I am definitely not a machine.