Re^2: What I am paid for

[grantm]

Code you write at home on your own equipment belongs to you -- although I've heard of contracts where that isn't the case.

Commonsense would suggest this would be the case, but a number of people have told me that this is not true in the US. By default anything you create is owned by your employer unless you get them to disclaim ownership in writing.

I don't live in the US and I am not a lawyer.

[talexb]

Right -- I didn't want to go off on a tangent and use up more bandwidth about this, but I have heard of Employment Contracts that basically say *anything* you write belongs to your employer. A classic tale about this is tilly's node Professional Employees and Works for Hire.

[mscharrer]

Do you mean *anything* related to your professional work? Or does thing *anything* also covers completely unrelated own OOS projects of the employee?

[dsheroh]

Anything. 24/7. In some cases, it doesn't even matter if it's work-related. I've seen employment contracts in the US which, taken as written, mean that if you work as a programmer and, during an extended vacation, you design and patent a new style of hairbrush, your employer owns that patent.

Now, whether those clauses are actually enforceable depends on what state you live in, but employers do routinely make such broad claims to any and all intellectual property developed by their employees, regardless of what it is or when it's created.