For the last 4 years I have been working (as a contractor) for a New York startup that recently got a large investment.
With the investment, they have started to be more grown up and for my contract renewal I received a contract with new wording.<p>There is one section "Ownership" with three paragraphs, and all of them scares me.<p>To me it reads as they will own anything I produce during the term of the contract that is related to the line of business they are in (which can be a very broad term depending how you interpret it; and I read this as they will own stuff I do in my spare time as well).<p>Anything (code, ideas etc) I create in my spare time I have to disclose to them so they are aware of it.<p>And the final clause is that they have the right that for all eternity sign any papers in my name to protect their intellectual property rights.<p>I am now looking for advice on this.<p>Ideally I want to find some standard paragraphs that I ask them put in instead.
It should give them all the ownership of the code I produce for them, but anything that is not produced for them is none of their concern.
(With exception if it would be something that could compete with them).<p>Anyone can give pointers to where to find such standard clauses?<p>Does anyone have recommendations for someone that does review of contracts (this is a New York contract)<p>Anyone have an idea what such a review of these paragraphs (or a whole contract) would cost? (just a ball park figure would be great, since I have no idea if it would cost 50 USD or 50000 USD)<p>The rest of the contract looks fine, it's just these paragraphs about ownership that are scary.