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Comment by ska | Hacker News Reader

> why is it OK to hand over patent rights for work done outside of contractually defined hours simply if it's the same discipline?

This is always naturally in contention because if you don't also constrain scope of work an employee can work in competition with their day job "on their own time" based on information they wouldn't have if they weren't employed by the company.

So this isn't supposed to cover random side projects, but should cover you creating a competitor, or related patents, etc. "off hours". Some companies legal departments just try and claim everything because it's easier.

The way I've seen this done well is some sort of internal review and/or disclosure mechanism.

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Internal reviews / disclosure mechanisms sound a bit dark to me, the power balance is unhinged. Imagine having a novel idea outside of work, putting some effort in at the weekends, only for your employer to absorb the idea because you naively disclosed it. I can't see any benefit to this system at all for the employee.

In my experience these reviews are not technically detailed, so much as about scope. The closer what you want to do is to what your company does, the more detailed the discussion is likely to be.

> I can't see any benefit to this system at all for the employee.

The real benefit to an employee is to have on paper agreement that they can proceed with a project without fear that the company will claim it later.

I suppose it could be done terribly, but my limited personal experience (on both sides) it's been fine.

On the other hand, if employees are so uninterested in their collective success at the company they are employed at, hasn't the employer already failed?

I've had two really good employers in my life, and I would never even have had the idea of competing with that company because working there was great so why would I try to make it worse by competing? It was/is in my own interest to not compete.

If an employer feels the need to have that clause, they should fix the problem at the source: become a better employer so that the employees have no reason to compete.

Eh. The principal-agent problem can't be disposed of so easily as that.

There's no amount of compensation and excellent work environment which can provide enough upside to make founding a whole company pointless. Better expected value because of lower risk? Absolutely. But not total potential upside.

I say that as someone working his dream job, who can't imagine trading out for mere money. But I can imagine leaving to found something, though I have no intention to do so.

And the converse: if someone has that a strong desire to found something that happens to be similar to what they're currently working on, do you really want them to stick around only for a contract clause, when their heart's no longer in that work?

Wouldn't it be far superior to be able to have an open conversation with them about it?

(I also object to the premise: a desire to found something doesn't show up in a vacuum. There's something else that founding something brings (independence, permission to try ideas, small chance at wild stacks of money, whatever) and many of these should be negotiable also at your current employer.

Any good long-term organisation has a few crazy projects that just might turn out to be the next best thing. Let this person "found" one of those, in house and with freedom but full support of the rest of the organisation?)

I feel the same way as you, but contracts don't exist for the "happy path". I'm sure many people are invested in the success of their employer, but not all are.

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