[ghaff]

The context of equipment here is (or should be) "all the expensive equipment in the lab that the employee couldn't possibly outfit themselves with." As you say, a generic laptop is awful close to being a pen and paper these days.

That said, if this sort of thing is a potential issue for you, you're probably better off using a purely personal laptop or desktop that isn't used for work purposes at all.

[magicalhippo]

> That said, if this sort of thing is a potential issue for you, you're probably better off using a purely personal laptop or desktop that isn't used for work purposes at all.

I got a similar clause, and this is indeed what I do. I think it's fair that they get copyright when they provide the software/hardware. It's also simple for me to avoid that, I just use my home computer with my own Windows license (or Linux) for any side projects.

I rejected the previous job offer due to a more general copyright claim to all my ideas ever. The current one only has the "using company equipment".

[ghaff]

>The current one only has the "using company equipment".

In that case, it makes a lot of sense just to keep the two domains separate. The flip side of a laptop being a relatively inexpensive piece of semi-commoditized gear if that, if there's a good reason to have a separate computer for personal projects, it's not really a big deal to do so.