Patented by who Your employer
nobugz wrote:
Software I personally developed got patented. Now I'm out of a job and unable to find employment doing what I'm good at. No fun.
I have to say I do believe that we, as developers, should start to put their foot down about this type of clause in the contract. Any intellectual rights should only be applied to the nature of the business of your employer so if you work for say a company that produces HR software and you go off and create a fantastic piece of accounting software, you should retain the rights to this.
The only reason these clauses are put into your contract is to stop you from stealing your employers business knowledge and therefore competing in the same market. If you work extra hours at home, creating some software that is completely unrelated to your employers sector, your company should not automatically own your creation.
When one of my employers tried to put this 'catch all' clause into our contracts, all the developers refused to sign it until the clause had been changed.
I think you have more room to negotiate with small companies, especially if you can get your entire team behind you. Yes this is a standard clause, and they may well say "everyone else signed it" but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't argue the point but at the end of the day, once you sign it, you've agreed to the T's and C's and therefore signed away your rights.
Companies will continue to introduce clauses into contracts that increase their rights over yours as long as they can get away with it. The EU introduced a maximum working week of 48 hours, but how many contracts now get you to automatically contract out of this agreement IP rights are no different. There has to be a point where you draw the line.
You would be surprised how many people sign contracts without reading them fully and understanding exactly what they are signing away. Good example is websites, lets say you are employed as a .Net Developer and you develop a few websites for your mates free of charge, IP rights would basically mean that your employer could turn round to your mates and say, give us some money because that is our Copyright material even though you did it for no charge in your own time.
Maybe you're right, maybe there should be a union or atleast if there was an industry recognised neutral IP clause that all developers agreed with, and more importantly, wouldn't sign contracts unless the employer implemented this IP clause, then and only then might things change...
we can always dream...
What big business dont realise it that if they ain't going to pay what its worth, then developers wont be as creative, after all, whats the point in someone spending their own hours trying out new ideas to invent something radical, if the company that employs them, only pays them the absolute contracted minimum, which in most cases, doesn't even include an overtime rate above their normal hourly rate.
Maybe we should start a Developers Co-Operative, or is that open source
I understand your pain, but this is not only us with problems. In fact, the factory workers got this problem long ago, until recently Asia picking it up with cheaper engneers. I am not sure I should tatoos suckers on my forhead since I haven't actively searching for a higher salery job. But, I heard the analysis says that software engneer is like top3 hottest occupation right now. You should try your luck.
Look at bright side, you are not an immigrant in the country. Immigrant like me don't speak fluent English usually ends up with lower possition and less salery. There are few exceptions, but they are either extremely good with English or they are American born. If you are caucasion, you know you have the edge over us simply with language and culture. And I think those two play a big part in any occupation.
Just to prove the point that some companies do have well worded IP clauses, I received my contract for my new employer yesterday. Their IP clause states that they will only own IP that relates to their buisness/company directly or inventions that are relevant to their targeted business sector. This means I am free to invent/create other programs, unrelated to their business sector (gives me the freedom I want) as long as I dont target the customers within their sector.
Proves that it can be done without compromising the employers rights or the employees rights!