[alanbyrne]

I agree with paraschopra. Many places I have worked have included a clause in the employment contract that says something along the lines of "Anything you create whilst working for us, including in your own time, will become property of our company"

[pkorzeniewski]

I can't believe some companies include such clause, I would never sign such bullshit agreement. I can understand a clause against creating something that can be a competition to your employer products, but other than that - stay away from my free time.

[walshemj]

Its the way Anglo Saxon employment law has developed over century's one of the key acts is the "Masters and Servants Act".

Employment law heavily favours the employer hint we are the "servants" here

[frandroid]

You may also never work for some of these awesome companies. Pact with the devil, etc.

[Dewie]

It seems that many professional programmers like to program on their spare time, maybe in order to use other technologies or something else. And yet companies like these want to be able to enforce that they can take over all that code produced in your free time... what the hell? Apparently they want to stifle people's creativity and discourage people who want to hone their craft outside of their job. Looks like a lose-lose, to me.

Maybe the company and the programmer doesn't care when the code produced is toy-programs/educational code, but it seems like a deal-breaker if the programmer wants to make some open-source code, or maybe even some code to produce some extra income. (I don't see a problem with the latter if it's in another domain than what the programmer is employed as.)

[retrogradeorbit]

There's doubt if such clauses are even legal. Depending on the wording of the clause it could be considered restraint of trade. I would also never sign such a contract. I would strike the clause and see what they say. If they try and defend the 'your own time' part, I would take that as meaning they actively intend to steal my personal work.

[bbody]

I have signed contracts like this to but normally they are explicit to that industry, which I think is kind of fair.

[dblacc]

Do you know of any other way around this, other than going to your employer explicitly ?

[ntrepid8]

I think the laws are different depending on the state but most of those overly broad agreements are not enforceable. Usually it has to be something that you could have only created with proprietary knowledge gained from your employer or access to customers gained during the course of business. So just because you are a web developer by day, your employers do not own the Minecraft forum you maintain by night.

I'm not a lawyer, so this is just my fuzzy recollection of what my lawyers told me. If you've got something serious on the line, a good lawyer's time is a cheap investment that will pay dividends in the long run.

[retrogradeorbit]

Yes, I too was explained this by a lawyer. The defence is the Restraint Of Trade doctrine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restraint_of_trade