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I agree the scope is very broad.

What do you think of the language used in 2b of https://www.docracy.com/53/employee-proprietary-information-... ?

"To the fullest extent under applicable law, the Company shall own all right, title and interest in and to all Inventions (including all Intellectual Property Rights therein or related thereto) that are made, conceived or reduced to practice, in whole or in part, by me during the term of my employment with the Company and which arise out of any use of Company’s facilities or assets or any research or other activity conducted by, for or under the direction of the Company (whether or not (i) conducted at the Company’s facilities, (ii) during working hours or (iii) using Company assets), or which are useful with or relate directly or indirectly to any “Company Interest” (meaning any product, service, other Invention or Intellectual Property Right that is sold, leased, used, proposed, under consideration or under development by the Company)."

You've got me sucked in now. So let's assume that I work for Gitlab, and I host all of my side-work / personal projects on Gitlab. Do that mean that those projects are effectively using "company facilities or assets?"

Usually "using company time/equipment/etc." are viewed as things that you obtained via your employment with the company. But what about things owned by the company that I would have obtained via the same channels as any other customer. Does Oracle have a claim on IP created using a piece of Oracle consumer software by an Oracle employee?

Yes this seems much more reasonable.

I am not knowledgeable or awake enough to comment with certainty on the "or which are useful with or relate directly or indirectly to any “Company Interest”" as backtracking to what the 'or' refers to has broken my brain.

But on the whole that is the kind of clause I would expect. It is more than reasonable (I wouldn't invest in a company that didn't) to seek unilateral ownership over company related work, IP and assets.

Thank you for being so responsive, now I feel somewhat obliged to drop GitLab onto our stack of infrastructure proposals.

Cool, thanks for your feedback. We'll have our IP lawyer have a look to narrow the scope https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/issues/861 Feel free to add further context to the issue.

Don't feel obliged but of course I do encourage you to take a look at GitLab :)

Hungarian law says that the employer can only claim IP rights if there was a clear order from the employer to create the new stuff. I think this is a good approach too.

I'm guessing you should probably double check that section either way, as I would be surprised if the broad language is legally binding. At least in Norway, adding text to a contract that overreach (ie: tries to enforce a clause that is effectively illegal) generally voids the contract (or at the very least that section) - falling back to standard/minimal protection afforded by the law. This would (in Norway) probably be great for your employees, but maybe not what you want as a company.

As far as I know, several European jurisdictions would work in a similar way.

For reference:

14. Additional jobs

Other than with the prior written permission of the Employer, the Employee is prohibited during the term of the Employment Contract to carry out work – either paid or not – of any nature whatsoever, either for himself and/or for third-parties.

Yeah, seems a bit much...

It should at least qualify the domain(s) with which the work pertains to.

Like I can't mow the lawn for the little old lady next door. Or take my friends kids to school.

"... either for himself and/or..."

Can't mow your own lawn either. And if you're an Orthodox Jew you can't use an elevator or oven.

My lay understanding is that any contract clause that a reasonable person would find unreasonable is by default not valid.

How would anyone enforce such a clause? Contract law isn't criminal law -the state nor federal prosecutor isn't going to come after you- so the aggrevied party would have to sue the other. Which wouldn't even make it to court for such an overreaching clause.

Edit: having said that, it seems unlikely a reasonable person could write that clause, so I'm not sure how such a thing could come about.

"My lay understanding is that any contract clause that a reasonable person would find unreasonable is by default not valid."

That understanding is entirely incorrect, unfortunately. While the law does provide for clauses that may be nullified or voided by either a court or existing case law, and does require a meeting of the minds and an exchange, simple "unreasonableness" is not grounds for voiding, nor is onerousness.

FWIW this is fairly common legalese in Dutch employement law. It basically boils down to, if you want to do something on the side: 1. Just let us know. 2. Dont built something which competes with us.

But legally they are claiming full power over everything, and just not exercising that power in practice.