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Comment by parasubvert | Hacker News Reader

In Canada, IP assignment only is for work done on company time & equipment unless otherwise assigned in your employment contract.

I've almost always excluded specific prior built or in-progress IP from my employment agreements without issue, as long as my employer's HR knows about it. Informing your employer of what you've created or are creating independently is almost always the best policy as it's unlikely they'll argue against it when it's early-stage (and you're protected if it becomes suddenly valuable).

More info http://www.cipo.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic....

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In California you aren't dependent on your employer being nice, or have any requirement to even inform them.

That is misleading. I've worked in California.

Firstly, obligatory invention disclosures are often enforceable if they're related to your employer's business, as they often exist to protect your mutual interests.

http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2009/01/08/what-do-you-n...

Secondly, IP assignment is related to this entry in the CA labour code:

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&gr...

Which clearly states that if you're working on the same area your employer is paying you for, it's not going to be trivial to claim it as your own even if you did it on your own time.

In short, California has the benefit of making IP assignment unenforceable if it's on your own time, in an unrelated area to your employer. But it's not carte blanche.

Not a lawyer, but talked to one about this with respect to Google's employment contract. His assertion was that you would be protected if your home project was not in conflict with your duties at the company, even if the company has other branches or departments working on something similar. He referenced some case law which involved an employee at either DEC SRC or DEC WRL who was working on his own thing, started a company and DEC tried to claim ownership based on the 'we do that' variant. Except he wasn't part of the group that did the conflicting work or involved with it. It has been like 5 years now since I did that research but if I can find it I'll see if I can add it to this thread.

Note - the other interesting bit here is that if you're worried you might be at risk, just quit. After all nobody who is suing their employer for ownership of their work stays an employee (at will work clauses). Even though I had confirmed that work on my project could not legally be claimed by Google by the time I had done the research and ascertained that it would end up in a lawsuit I was already convinced it wasn't going to be a good long term fit for me. That simplified the question immensely :-)

Note I did state "conflicts of interest aside". Something search related while at Google or accounting related while at Intuit would clearly fall in that category. A new pet food would not.

Sure, I just thought the suggestion that you don't even need to disclose it, while true in theory, can be risky.

My original post wasnt intended as criticism, it really just trying to provide commentary that while Canada doesn't have the full protections of Cali, the typical contract only assigns specific areas relate to your work.

Also, related, non-competes in Ontario at least are largely unenforceable.

> In Canada, IP assignment only is for work done on company time & equipment unless otherwise assigned in your employment contract.

That's true, but it's usually part of the boilerplate. I'm not suggesting it's related to the perceived problem, but every research position I've been in has had a clause like that. One place even offered to change it for me, saying "oh that's just some boilerplate the lawyers used."

I've worked for four different companies here in Canada—two of them startups—and none of them asked for anything except standard IP assignment (e.g., time/equipment) and disclosure of in-progress or previously created works.

I work for a Canadian company and IP assignment is written in the standard contract boilerplate. AFAIK it's never been enforced, but it's there.

It was in my employment contract the last time I switched jobs. I got it taken out.

Were they research positions?

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