[katet]

Without diving into the ins-and-outs of this, my current contract contains a claim like this. Well outside the US, and the UK/EU - it's in South East Asia.

It says something like "on company equipment" and/or "reasonably related to skills/knowledge gained or applicable during employment with the company".

So I wouldn't quite quote this as being US imperialism. I seem to recall similar clauses in my previous contracts, but can't swear on it.

My take is the "skills/knowledge gained or applicable with the company bit": if its in my company's core market, then sure. If it's from training they paid for/provided (say - I don't know - Kotlin, if I didn't already know Kotlin) then OK.

But if I make a PHP/JS app, in my own time, in an unrelated market, then they can bite me for it. Obviously, in a more litigious environment, some people may not want to take that risk.

[Mirioron]

>reasonably related to skills/knowledge gained or applicable during employment with the company

Let's imagine that you didn't know how to read and write before being employed at that company. If you learn how to read and write during your employment then the company owns rights to anything you write? And they own the rights to anything you make that requires reading too.

This clause essentially tells the employee to go out of their way not to learn anything new while employed at the company. Does the company, by chance, offer training in very broad skills to employees "free of charge"?

[reroute1]

Let's not imagine a ridiculous hypothetical where someone gets a job without knowing how to read. That doesn't make any sense as an analogy. Learning how to read is not any domain specific skill anyway, if you work for a pharmaceutical company they don't give a shit if you write, unless you are spilling company secrets.

[lovich]

I don't know. Lots of people learn to write different kinds of code at work. I also think writing code isn't domain specific as I've never worked in the same industry twice over 6+ jobs.

Seems pretty comparable

[masukomi]

the problem with that is that you "gain skill" in their programming language when you work there. And you "gain skill" as a programmer...

[angelbar]

Suppose you learn Japanese at work ... can't you use that knowledge in the field?