[johannes1234321]

So when you come up with a solution to a work problem in the shower in the morning or while lying awake in bed in the evening you could sell it to the employer, since you owned that time?

What happens if you create something patentable in the eve information related to your employer's business, maybe even to your project. Can you patent it yourself and then collect royalties from your employer?

What happens if you infringe Copyright on a competitor on your GitHub project, where your GitHub profile also says where you are working, can the competitor distinguish wether it was you personally or as part of work?

For creative work it is tough to fully distinguish between work and leisure time ... some companies deal with this better though, than others.

[hajile]

In a right to work state, you could indeed walk in, terminate your employment, and file a patent later. You could then charge that company for that work. In civil court, it would be argued as to when you actually had the idea.

In these civil suits, the one with the most money wins, so you would still lose even if you indeed solved the problem after you left.

No need to defend those huge corporations. They're perfectly capable of bribing officials to screw over employees all by themselves.

[jammygit]

This is a fair argument, but the solution isn't to just strip the employees right to own their own thoughts.

The specific problem seems to be about patents and trade secrets. If a contract covered those two things well, would an employer have legitimate cause to push further than that?

[johannes1234321]

Well, for corporate lawyers the solution is easy :-D

A good solution is hard.