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Comment by paulrosenzweig | Hacker News Reader

I haven't heard about many disputed cases. I'd hope that if Google went around suing for possession of unrelated side projects, we'd hear about it.

Maybe the possibility of being publicly shamed is a deterrent from pursing ownership.

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A company I worked for (property appraisal company) got acquired by another company. They forced one of the higher up developers out. 6 months later that developer wrote an app dealing with lines at Disney and was making money on ad revenue. The company came after him claiming they owned it because he used skills and knowledge he gained while employed to write that app. We had a "everything you do at any time belongs to us" contract.

So it does actually happen.

Were they successful? I can't imagine any judge agreeing that, since you left a company, you can no longer make a living.

It was settled out of court, he never did tell us what the final outcome was.

How did the company know what he was working on six months after he was forced out?

He was at the original company for 15 years at the time and was the 2nd developer at the company. So he had a lot of friends at the company and he told his friends at the company that he made this cool app and word got around because everyone thought it was harmless to repeat.

Can you name the company? This kind of thing deserves bad press.

They got acquired by another company and then gutted, most of the management that did that got thrown out after anyway so I don't know how much it matters.

That being said I always read my employment contracts now.

So that company owns any work he does for any future employer? That sounds absurdly unenforceable.

What state was this in?

This was in Florida but the company that bought us was based in Minnnesota

Google has an application process where, before you've written any code, you can ask for copywrite release. However, if you don't do that, they can and WILL claim ownership over your personal projects. It's happened to me.

Google is actually pretty good about this. They clarify some areas that are no-no, and there is a simple process for asking if a side project can be released as open source.

What if I don't want to open source it? What if I want to make money?

Not just that it's horrible for morale. Imagine other developers hear about this. Then they start demanding shit in their contracts.

Or they forced the person they where suing to sign a compromise agreement as part of the settlement

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