What country is this? I can't imagine such a scenario outside of a serfdom.
http://www.salon.com/2004/08/18/evan_brown/
Follow-up:
https://everything2.com/title/The+Thoughts+of+Evan+Brown
Solution: never disclose anything to your employer unless absolutely required. If you have a new idea, keep it quiet until you quit your job.
FTA:
(After 5 1/2 years of litigation, Judge Curt B. Henderson of Collin County, Texas' 219th District Court ruled in favor of Alcatel, and Brown was obliged to fully disclose the idea to Alcatel and only Alcatel, and to repay in full Alcatel's legal fees of more than $330,000, which according to Brown forced him to sell his house and other assets.
During the court case, Brown argued that since his idea had never been committed to paper or physically manifested in any way, there were no grounds for the company to claim ownership of his very thoughts, and he drew comparisons to the fact that an invention cannot be copyrighted or patented until it is transferred from an idea onto paper.
He didn't handle his case well, which torpedoed it. But in parts of the US, yes... anything you do during the course of your employment is owned by the employer.
As a contractor, I've been asked to sign contracts with similar clauses. Uh... no. I have other customers, and you don't own what they pay me to do. Their typical counter is "But this is a standard clause".
Telling them to "no contract" is usually the only option. They just can't understand why an entirely one-sided contract isn't good for me.
This is different, though, from the case where you are employed as a secretary for a bodyguard company and then work as a musician outside of your regular employment, isn't it?
I mean, suppose Adele was the secretary and then started her musical career during that time. Would the bodyguard company be entitled to royalties from her catalog? I don't think so, and I don't think this case says they would either.
Not really. If the contract states they own everything you do while you're employed by them, they really do own everything.
As for Adele, she's British. Such clauses are generally null and void in the English Common Law system. Your employer owns what they pay you do to, and what you create using employer tools. But if you work as a computer programmer, and invent a better mousetrap at home, your employer can't claim ownership of the mousetrap.
But that company still end up shutting down side projects of two of its employees.
One was a simple site that documented company's API and had a few sample code snippets. It got popular. The guy running it even received recognition on company's newsletter. Next thing I know is that company forced the guy to handover site and domain to them. Apparently, he worked on it during work hours. He said he never did but who knows.
Then another guy's completely unrelated app got shut down due to same reasons. But the guy claims he never even opened app on his personal cell phone while on company property. Everyone in the company had some sort of app but this app got popular & profitable. Jealousy set in. One of his teammate claimed he saw the guys working on the app. He was forced to handover the code. Then company did nothing with the app and removed it from marketplace. Rumor is that he has another app but he tells no one about it.
I believe same thing happens in big companies. AFAIK, they don't hire any team to monitor web to make sure their employees haven't released anything on their own. But someone who works with an employee learns about a successful app, gets jelous and tip legal department.
Lesson is even if your company is pro side projects, don't tell anyone about it. Humans are jealous creatures and they will find a way to hurt your project.
Not that they are necessarily enforceable, but it doesn't stop employers from trying.
Is there any place in the U.S. where a judge would enforce such a contract to that degree?