Why NYC is not Palo Alto cc: MikeBloomberg

I'm reminded of Joel (Spolsky's) excellent commentary on this matter.<p><a href="http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/19422/if-im-working-at-a-company-do-they-have-intellectual-property-rights-to-the-stu/20136#20136" rel="nofollow">http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/19422/if-im-working-...</a><p>tl;dr from the post:<p>"So... to answer your question. There is unlikely to be substantial difference between the contracts that you sign at various companies in the US working as a programmer or in the law that applies."

At my company in NYC (Intent Media) the founders specifically spent time writing a clause into our standard employment agreement granting everyone the rights to their side projects.<p>I'm not sure how common this is, but it seems like something that everyone should look at before signing on with a company, especially with the battle for talent that's going on right now.

I think its not really about the law - most startups don't even realize it exists. Its much more about the culture. Investors in the Valley have had phenomenal success for some time directly investing in start-ups and firms are willing to take a bet that they will invest in the next big thing. NYC firms aren't as accessible, and even the big events (Disrupt) tend to be Valley based. Also NYC has a talent issue (although I think this is changing), for a very long-time NYC start-ups had to compete with banks to get tech talent and there isn't a huge pool of schools feeding into the city. Finally NYC is expensive, so its harder to get a "garage" to work from and 2K a month is tough to live on.<p>That said a lot of these issues are being resolved, and I see both founders and investors making a very big dent this time around particularly with mobile start-ups.

Nothing is stopping NYC startups &#38; employees from drafting an appropriate contract to make ownership of side-project work belong to the employee.

Unfortunately, the blog post is somewhat flawed. In the CA law he references, it clearly states that the exception to you owning your code/ideas is if they "relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer's business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer."<p>While IANAL, the consensus on a number of websites is that, while working for a tech startup, anything that you do in your free time could technically belong to the company you work for as its related to your "employer's business."

While interesting, this seems like an insignificant piece of minutia, considering the title.

I recently took that startup genome quiz and I hit upon a truth that I sort of already realized: To launch a successful startup you need to do it full time. So yes your weekend project could be the next Facebook, but the odds are really against you.<p>I think the real issue with Silicon Alley (having been a part of the scene since the early 90s) is that Wall Street still swallows quite a bit of the top tech talent — that with a super high overhead can get in your way. It's better than it was years ago, but that's more of the big issue for NYC as I see it.

Has anyone with a successful w/e project been successfully sued over this in NY state and lost?