On Wed, 2004-11-10 at 01:53, Philip Stortz wrote:
> as for voluntary agreements, this is the rub.  for many technical people
> entering into such an agreement in return for employment is not optional
> as it has become common practice amongst all major companies (at least
> here in the u.s.), thus if a technical person wishes to be employed in a
> technical field they do not have any real power to negotiate this point
> of their employment.  i have a problem with this.  i particularly have a
> problem when it is applied to non-technical employees, patents that may
> be devised long after working for  a given company or which do not have
> any connection to that companies business or the technical work the
> employee has done for them.  

Definitely not true, at least not anymore. In fact a company I know of
(VERY big company) USED to have clauses like that in their employment
contracts, things like "everything you do, during business hours, out of
business hours, at home or anywhere else, is ours". Not quite that
brutal, but that was the gist. The latest contract? None of that, only
the reasonable: work you do on company time and/or on company equipment
is the company's.

Remember, just because something is in a contract doesn't make it so, a
company can't enforce a clause in a contract you sign that isn't legal
to begin with. I'm not sure if this sort of stuff is "illegal", but I
think the lawyers noticed that it wasn't very cut and dry and taking it
out was probably the better move. TTYL
 
-----------------------------
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