[etsimm]

I was running the engineering group of a VC backed firm when the side project a couple of my people were working on nights & weekends got some great press coverage. By the time it hit TC the Engineers' names were there along with a quote about how their work was supported by their "day job" ... Our VCs took notice and our boilerplate employee PIIA was trotted out to claim rights to the side project. The project was completely unrelated to our line of business BTW...but it didn't matter as the VCs smelled IP value in the press exposure.

I fought the good fight against some silly assertions such as "They could not have built this in so little time without overlapping working hours" but lost the battle when the VCs pointed to the timestamps of some support/feedback comments posted by one of my Engineers on the project's website. He had written those and posted during working hours while sitting in the office of said "day job"

Project squashed, all the IP was rolled up and shelved. It was a bad day.

TL;DR these clauses are typically not enforced because your side project is typically viewed as worthless. If on the other hand your project is seen as a source of value... tread carefully.