Re: [dev] [PATCH] Add tab-completion file-name expansion.

From: Maxime Coste <frrrwww_AT_gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2014 00:20:39 +0100

On Mon, Jul 07, 2014 at 09:39:36PM +0200, Anselm R Garbe wrote:
> On 7 July 2014 21:24, Maxime Coste <frrrwww_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
> > Seems to me you probably have tons of corporate copyright without knowing it,
> > most software engineer contract specify that any code written by the employee
> > *including* non working hours and *including* projects not linked with the
> > companies is under company's copyright.
>
> IMHO I only came across such legal terms in a contract proposal by
> some US company, a couple of years ago.
> Apart from US companies I can't confirm that such contracts are common
> practice, particularly not under German law.

Not very knowledgeable about German laws, but my French work contract did include
such a clause, as does my Irish one. National laws can invalidate some part of it
if you end up in legal dispute, however without known legal precedent, I trust what
is written in my contract (and asked for exclusion on the code I contribute).
Note that is standard practice, for intellectual property reasons.

The idea is that you can always claim having invented whatever patentable
algorithm or trade secret or first version of the code you finally implemented
at work under your shower at home in the morning. So allowing you to have
copyright on whatever you write at home is dangerous for a company.

> Source code that is pretty much unrelated to your typical day job that
> is developed during non working hours, is typically not copyright of
> your employer as long as this is not stated explicitely -- and I
> wouldn't sign such a contract. Otherwise the tomatos that you harvest
> in the summer in your garden might also become property of your
> employer ;)

It does not really apply to tomatoes, as you do not create intellectual
property by growing them. I expect any intellectual property based work
contract to contain similar clauses.

Cheers,

Maxime.
Received on Tue Jul 08 2014 - 01:20:39 CEST