[bermanoid]

Does anyone here have any experience (and advice about) negotiating against intellectual property clauses? I'm particularly interested in whether fairly large companies are ever willing to give these up, or if it's just part of the price one has to pay for accepting employment.

Right now I'm working as a consultant with a team that keeps trying to convince me to consider coming in-house; up until recently, moving wasn't an option for family reasons, but now, it's become more realistic. It's a great team that I really enjoy working with, and I'm sure that the offer would be more than fair (my current consulting rate implies a pretty tight range for an offer, one that's in line with what they pay their engineers currently), but unfortunately, they are a subsidiary of BigCorp, and I know for a fact that BigCorp places some restrictions on outside projects, and that makes me nervous - having had to aggressively edit my consulting contract so that it was reasonable (to be fair, they accepted those edits without undue drama), I'm all but sure that their employment contracts are going to be very restrictive, and likely include full IP transfer clauses, not to mention long term non-competes and NDAs. State of California, if it matters.

Is it a complete pipe dream to hope that I might be able to get them to strike some of those restrictions, or will some big companies play ball on those matters? Non-compete clauses that terminate after a reasonable period I can (reluctantly) accept, but losing the ability to do open source work and/or my own projects would be too much for me, I'd rather just keep on keeping on as a consultant...

[rmc]

Doesn't hurt to ask?

A job offer is the whole packages things they give you (salary, benefit-in-kind) and things you give them/have to do (come into work every day, do what you're told in work, and any NDA/IP enforcement/non-compete). If one part of the package (non-compete) is something you don't like then you can and should ask them about changing it.

If they are accepting you working for them with no IP things in your contracter contract, then it's not impossible to imagine them accepting an employment contract with it. If they want to hire you then they might be more motivated. Likewise since you edited the contractor contract, you have already successfully raised the issue of outside work with them.

[autarch]

My experience has generally been that large corporations don't really have any wiggle room here. The contract is created by a legal team that is totally separate from the division hiring you.

Generally, a smaller company is more willing to negotiate these terms, since the person doing the hiring is likely to be closer to the person who came up with the contract.

I've refused to sign contracts because of draconian IP clauses. I always make sure the contract limits the scope of IP ownership to work done at the request of the employer. This is especially important for me since I've worked at home for years, so there's no clear demarcation between work/personal hours and equipment.

[tobiasSoftware]

I really want an answer to this too. I just graduated, am nearly broke so I need my first job. However, I have several ideas for a startup that I want to implement soon, I'm at the point where I can have a working business within a couple months. The problem is that I know getting a startup to the point where you can live off of it will take much longer, thus I NEED a real job, and want the startup just to be a few hours a week on the side for the next couple years. However, this startup is my life dream, I don't care if I can't live off of it but I need to get it out there and see what happens at least, and I am pretty sure I would turn down a job if it prevented me from doing that. So I'm kind of stuck if companies will truly demand me to turn over any programming that I do during my employment with them.

[rmc]

There is no hard and fast rule. There are loads of Real Jobs™ that don't require any sort of NDA/IP thing. It is definitly not 'standard' for all tech jobs to include that. Also, if a contract has that stuff, you are free to negotiate that. There is no philosophical difference between negotiating about salary, and negotiating about out of hours work.

There is a shortage of IT talent. Ergo you are in a strong bargaining position.