[ChuckMcM]

I agree with this, mostly its about avoiding in interesting litigation hassle where you 'submarine' your invention into a company and then sue the company for stealing it.

That said, it is always a good idea to keep really good records of what you're doing on your time, and the things you have "baking" when you join a company. That will help you in two ways, one it makes this paperwork trivial to fill out [1] I know of one case where it started a discussion with some IP people at the hiring company who then offered a lump sum to purchase the disclosed IP.

It is pretty standard language these days. Given the hiring challenges you have the option of working with a lawyer to create an agreement that is more agreeable to you, however failing to come to terms on that agreement is a perfectly reasonable reason for someone not to hire you, even if they had previously said they would.

Last tip, if its something that keeps you up at night you're probably not going to be happy, long term, working for anyone but yourself.

[1] One tip, you don't have to have list details here just a reference identifier, so for example if you're working on "Studmuffin: The Game" just mention "all rights related to the game: Studmuffin: The Game" on your disclosure form, and later if the question comes up (like they try to say you some how worked on it on their time) you can refer back to your dated notes from before your employment and your records that you kept on time spent that wasn't company time or company equipment.

[pvg]

I had the pleasure of reading some comment of yours a few months back about your work on NIS+ at Sun. These are all perfectly sane ideas but surely when you were at Sun, you signed an AoI agreement _at least_ as restrictive as what the OP is talking about. Or was that not the case and/or did you involve lawyers?

[ChuckMcM]

Coincidentially I've been on a kick for a while now of scanning stuff and was looking recently at some of the employment agreements I've signed over the years. My non-lawyer impression is that they all "say" about the same things but get progressively more detailed about it. The most recent one I signed was as part of the Blekko acquisition by IBM. Blekko's was pretty strictly boiler plate, IBM's has clearly been litigated a few times and the terms stated more clearly. The exact contents are of course confidential (which I find sad because as far as I can tell there isn't anything particularly valuable in say Google's terms versus Sun's terms and comparing them is interesting.)

And when I went to Sun my 'disclosures of previous inventions' was empty, when acquired by IBM it was about a page and a half. Of course if they are going to be somewhat detailed, so am I. So for example I now always mention my web site (which is much neglected of late but has a few ads which make a small amount a money each month), between my Google and Blekko engagements I had a pitched a storage idea to a couple of people, no one has actually built it yet so I keep it on the list, Etc. The sorts of the things you tend to collect over the years. Nobody has ever had any issue with me putting these things on the pre-disclosure list.

Generally I've found the much more onerous terms are the requirements for using your personal device to access work resources, they have gotten quite extreme (which I understand, given the security challenges). When the agreements start to reach out to computers or what not that I own and that do not have any connection with my employer I start to get a bit twitchy :-).

Bottom line, I think Sun's AoI had the same Intention as the ones the OP is talking about but it wasn't as verbose about it, and over the years I've noticed more and more verbiage to make it really clear that when you work for company X they really own the things you develop on their time, even if you think you're contributing to an open source project as part of your job. That latter wasn't even a 'thing' when I joined Sun.

[pvg]

Hah, yes, there is no question the verbiage has become, well, verbier over the years, probably not for the better.

Nobody has ever had any issue with me putting these things on the pre-disclosure list.

This has remained a happy invariant. Short of the rare case of ending up in a deeply adversarial relationship with your employer, I don't think anyone gives much of a hoot about this stuff. But it's useful to write it down.