[alok-g]

Hi John,

Being based in California, I am well aware of the laws specific to here also (though IANAL). After having read two books on IP laws, I totally agree with what this lawyer told you -- not to sign. If you were to sign, there are plenty of things there that prevent you from having side projects and moonlighting even if you are in California.

A question: So did you join the company without signing it? What was the reaction of the company? Were they just OK? I know of cases where not signing meant refusing to accept the job. I also know of one case where they allow you to not sign it, but then also bar you from receiving any sign-on and performance bonuses while you are with the company (i.e., you get only the basic pay plus benefits, no RSUs, cash bonus, etc.)

Thanks.

[johnward]

We were acquired and in order to stay employed you had to agree to the new terms. This is a very very large corp that's core business is IP, they don't make exceptions for this. I have bills to pay so I signed.

[alok-g]

This is what I expected too. Thanks for responding. I keep on asking these questions to people where relevant to understand how many people have these issues, and thereby also advice other people who are plain unaware.

A majority of people who are aware of their employment contracts report having these issues and cannot legally have contributions to open source or side projects on their Github profiles [1]. I extrapolate from that that those who are unaware of these also are legally-speaking bound by their contracts for these contributions. I still see this rising use of Github profiles to tell good developers apart from bad developers. There was a huge thread I had started on "Startup Engineering" Coursera discussion forums on this topic itself that generated over 50 replies, several new data-points, and also over 20 down-votes for me ;-)

[1] Unless they have appropriately written permission from their employers of course...