"Google asserts copyright, even on work I do in my own time." (Snap framework)

So, under California law, which is probably the most liberal in the United States coving IP, you are prescribed from competing with your employer even on your own time or on your own equipment. This is reinforced in industry employment agreements, including Google's (my employer)<p>Most employers take the position that everything you do in the space is logically competitive. Recognizing that, we, Google, make it very easy to get permission to open source things, but under Google copyright.<p>We have a process for releasing under your own copyright, but it is not as flexible. That said, we've cleared about 200 (75% of those requested) projects in the last year for copyright release.<p>It's easy to get knee-jerk about this and get upset, but recognizing the nature of IP in a company and acting on it is infinitely better than pretending the problem doesn't exist and then, in the future, retroactively claiming copyright when convenient. The latter leads to lawsuits and unfair restraints on creativity and competition.<p>This system works. We've released 10s of millions of lines of code into thousands of open source projects. It protects the employees and it protects Google and the price is a bit of complexity and the odd thread like this.<p>Also, thanks to this system, Googlers can work on Google equipment and during their 20% on these kinds of projects, which is clearly useful and recognizes that people who work on open source almost universally do so without regard to the machinery or network they use.

This concept irritates me. You basically can't create things on your own if you work for a company? I just completely disagree with these kind of no-compete things.<p>That said, I also think it's silly to sign a contract that states this as a condition of employment. I've walked away from a couple of consulting opportunities in the past because of contracts like this, but gotten a few others because I just politely asked if they would strike out that part of the contract.<p>I understand wanting to protect your own intellectual property, but I think it's sleazy to claim ownership of things people do on their own time. It's right up there with "no competing with us for 2 years after we fire you" clauses.

The boundaries between what's yours and what's the companies is usually outlined by:<p>a) Did you do it on the company's time?<p>b) Did you use company equipment or resources to do it?<p>c) Does it pertain to the company's current or future business?<p>Item (c) is where the legal gray area shows up. It gives you enough leeway to innovate on your own time with your own stuff but it also gives the company the legal right to assert themselves if they feel you've strayed to close to "company matters".<p>(c) is important because your employer can not control what's in your head. If you work for a company that builds cars, they don't want you thinking of a new, innovative way to build a car on your own time, leaving, patenting it, and then competing with them.<p>This is entirely reasonable for both parties, IMO. In this particular case it looks like the author has build a web server. This clearly falls within the realm of what Google might consider their current or future business and therefore can reasonably believe that the author is using Google knowledge (even if not equipment, resourecs, or time) to build it.<p>EDIT: Clearly every IP agreement is different; however, every one I've ever read or signed has essentially been the above. Further, there is always a schedule allowing you to outline the IP you currently own that might violate (c).

Hello,<p>I see the righteous indignation engine is fully spinning up on my behalf. No need: I can take care of myself, thanks. I posted this on the github thread, but:<p>* Google has a slightly paperwork-heavy process I could have gone through to retain copyright on further contributions to this project<p>* I chose not to use it in lieu of using a paperwork-free process which involves me assigning copyright to <i>MY</i> contributions under a Google copyright<p>* I am quite happy with this situation, from a de facto standpoint my day-to-day life is completely unaffected<p>* because the code is BSD-licensed and it REALLY doesn't matter.<p>...but if railing against the "man" is making you guys happy, then by all means, continue?

I just joined Amazon.com, and they explicitly state that they do NOT own work done on my own time, unless that work is in direct competition with Amazon itself:<p>"During the course of employment and at the termination thereof, the Employee shall promptly disclose and deliver over to the Company, without additional compensation, to the extent that such disclosure could reasonably be expected to be of interest to the Company, in writing, or in such form and manner as the Company may reasonably require, the following: ... any and all algorithms, procedures or techniques related to the Company's business activities or to the Employee's work with the Company, and the essential ideas and principles underlying such algorithms, procedures or techniques, conceived, originated, adapted, discovered, developed, acquired, evaluated, tested, or applied by the Employee while employed by the Company, whether or not such algorithms, procedures or techniques are embodied in a computer program...However, the Company recognizes that the Employee may Conceive and/or Originate certain Products and/or Services which are unrelated to the activities of the Company, unrelated to the planned activities of the Company, and unrelated to any reasonable extension of the activities or planned activities of the Company ("Unrelated Products and/or Services"). The parties therefore agree, the other provisions of this Section 1 notwithstanding, that...any Unrelated Products and/or Services Conceived and/or Originated by the Employee, even while employed by the Company, shall not be considered Disclosure information..."

1. For <i>inventions,</i> several U.S. states have law protecting employee's off-duty rights in a manner somewhat similar to California. See:<p>Del. Code. Ann. 805 <a href="http://delcode.delaware.gov/title19/c008/index.shtml" rel="nofollow">http://delcode.delaware.gov/title19/c008/index.shtml</a><p>765 Ill. Code 1060 <a href="http://law.justia.com/illinois/codes/2005/chapter62/2238.html" rel="nofollow">http://law.justia.com/illinois/codes/2005/chapter62/2238.htm...</a><p>Minn. Stat. 181.78 <a href="https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/?id=181.78" rel="nofollow">https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/?id=181.78</a><p>N.C. Gen. Stat. 66-57.1 <a href="http://law.onecle.com/north-carolina/66-commerce-and-business/66-57.1.html" rel="nofollow">http://law.onecle.com/north-carolina/66-commerce-and-busines...</a><p>Wash. Rev. Code 49.44.140 <a href="http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=49.44.140" rel="nofollow">http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=49.44.140</a><p>(This list is taken from a treatise on software law I published a number of years back; more states may have enacted similar laws since then.)<p>-------------<p>2. For <i>copyright</i> ownership, in the U.S., and I think in quite a few other countries, a company's ownership of an employee's "work of authorship" would depend on whether the work was either:<p>(i) a work made for hire, usually meaning created "within the scope of employment" - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire</a> ; or<p>(ii) assigned to the employer - which an employment contract might require the employee to do.

In the state of California, Google does not have an absolute right to ownership on all work done in your spare time. From California Labor Code Section 2870:<p><a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&#38;group=02001-03000&#38;file=2870-2872" rel="nofollow">http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&#3...</a><p>They can claim ownership if the work was done with the company's property, or the work is related to the company's business. And courts in California have generally held that the relation has to be pretty strong. So a software company can't claim ownership on _all_ software products you create in your spare time, just that which is "substantially similar" to what the company does.<p>There was a Joel on Software discussion on this a while back:<p><a href="http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.451795.20" rel="nofollow">http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.451795.2...</a><p>EDIT: The above is not legal advice. Corporate and worker rights vary by country, and the U.S., by state. But I hope the above is informative to Google engineers who work in California.

For this comment, let's assume that Google is correct that it owns copyright on all code he writes, even in his free time and not pertaining to his work at Google.<p>Now, that presumed, when an author contributes to the project, they explicitly agree to license their contributions under to the project's BSD license.<p>However, Google owns this code being contributed, and yet they, as a corporate entity, have not consented to the licensing of their contributions being distributed under the BSD license. Until they do, in writing, signed by the corporate legal counsel, or whoever else is able to sign contracts on their behalf, the code contributed is not BSD licensed because the author, which is Google Inc, did not agree to it in writing, and thus distribution and use is now a violation of Google's copyright since they did not legally consent to have their code released. As the owner of the code, Google alone can consent to its use, and not the "code slave resource" who happened to produce it, whose very soul Google now contractually owns.<p>This could be a problem for the project.<p>In general, projects need to require that anyone contributing new code represent that they alone are the owners of the copyright to the new code being contributed. If you contribute code owned by someone else and not explicitly licensed in a compatible manner by that other entity, then you have code in the project that presents a serious legal liability.

I've seen this type of situation blow up pretty badly. Coworker started a side-project, quit company, side-project becomes <i>really</i> successful, and the company sued the ex-employee. Legally the situation was perhaps iffy (they ended up settling out of court), but it left a bad enough impression on me that I ended up leaving the company soon after, on moral grounds. I just could not work for a company that thinks they own my brain, and I will never do so again.

My own point of view is that of course it's unjust if employers are able to claim copyright on work that their employees wrote outside of work hours without using company equipment (see e.g. <a href="http://unixguru.com/" rel="nofollow">http://unixguru.com/</a>), and that everyone reading this thread should work to reform your state or country's laws so that they are more like California's in this matter, but even California's law isn't as ironclad a protection as explicit agreement on Google's part, because I'm sure there's some way snap-server could be construed to relate to Google's business.<p>It would be better if Google simply quitclaimed any copyright interest in snap-server over to Gregory, but of course that would even cover stuff he does at work, and it makes sense that there's an approval process for that.

My employer is sensible about this issue.<p>Everyone files an IP declaration enumerating the projects that are or may become relevant to the company's business. Since this determination is made at their sole discretion, I threw the kitchen sink at it and wrote down everything.<p>From the date of that declaration, they have a 90 day period in which they have an exclusive option to negotiate to buy. I am obliged to negotiate in good faith, but I am not obliged to sell. After that window, the option goes up in smoke.

I worked for IBM years ago. I remember signing their IP contract on the day I started work, while my manager explained to me "it doesn't matter if you're vacationing on the moon -- if you invent something while there, it's ours".

This is from the author on that link:<p>"Holy crap. The situation is quite simple:<p>pre-existing work I contributed to this project remains under my copyright<p>contributions other people make to this project remain under their own copyrights<p>contributions I make to this project subsequent to November 2010 are under Google copyright<p>nobody should really give a shit about this because a) I freely agreed to this even though Google has a process where I could have asked to retain my own copyright because b) the code is BSD licensed and you can use it however you like regardless of who owns the copyright.<p>The only thing this would potentially make more difficult for me is if I wanted to re-license the code under some other terms. But I would have to obtain permission from our other contributors to do that anyways."<p>Seems reasonable

Not a weird Google thing. Very typical IP contract term.

If there's one lesson to learn here:<p>When you are joining a new company, review the agreement. If you see a non-compete clause for post-employment time periods, cross it out. If you don't see some verbiage that explicitly makes clear the company doesn't own anything you do on your own time and with your own equipment, add it in.<p>If Google is hiring "A" employees, how come they aren't bright enough to add such a clause to their employment agreement?

What else of Google's employees stuff do Google get to own? If they get into debt, does Google share that too?

There are two sides to this issue, neither of which are unfair. The employer hires people to solve problems in a given space and has a right to make sure they own what they paid for. On the other side the problem space doesn't (shouldn't) include everything. The better defined the problem space the fewer problems you will have. I've been on both sides of the issue and found that people are willing to accept both sides. The last few places I worked management was willing to change the standard contract from the normal "we own all unless you get an exception" to "we own all related directly to this specific project or done on company time/equipment". If your employer is unwilling to make the change and you are unwilling to work somewhere else consider part of the cost of working.

The only case where this could be acceptable is when you work in the R &#38; D dept. of a company. If you are hired for specific tasks (which is usually the case) then everything else you do should belong to you, only. Einstein produced most of the work that led to the relativity theory while he was an employee of a patent office. Should the patent office claim anything related to his work in physics? It would be really absurd, if it did.

I glad to see everyone is finally giving a shit about a Haskell project!

I've seen a number of employer agreements indicating that they own everything that you do, whether on the clock or not.<p>Would those companies want to have ownership/copyright assigned to everything I do automatically, even if I created child pornography, or created some IP-violating software, or broke some US-export restrictions? It seems a pretty <i>dangerous</i> position to take - "we own everything you do" - which assumes that everything I do is legal/safe in the first place.

Even though I'm certain no comment of mine precipitated this wild overreaction, I'd still like to make it clear that I never intended to encourage anything but academic discussion among Snap developers when I responded to Greg's comment on github.<p>cdibona's candid description of the situation certainly does not warrant a Marxist interpretation.

I think the copyright statement is just plain wrong currently. It should say "Copyright (c) 2010, Google, Inc. and Snap Framework authors (see CONTRIBUTORS)". Google owns only the parts made by Google employees, other parts are still owned by their respective authors.

I do wonder how many open source / free software projects have code contributed to them that is actually owned by Google (or some other corporation) and will it come back to bite anyone?

I'm a little curious as to what legal rights (if any) a copyright holder has over a BSD licensed work. Anyone care to weigh in on this?

Am I the only person who thinks he wasn't being serious, and is now just seeing how long he can keep a straight face?

Nope not by California law. Work you do in your own time on your own hardware is yours. Period.