In many states ( California may be one of the exceptions ) those kinds of clauses are completely unenforceable if the "invention" is developed on your own time and only on your own equipment. If you are using company resources, then it definitely murkies the waters, but so long as you steer clear of that, then the generally accepted IP guidelines state that unless your contract specifically denotes the specific code your are writing is a "work made for hire" then you by default own the source code.
If, in the case of JavaScript or other similar languages the deliverable is actually, by the nature of the technology, the code, then it gets into a grey area as well, because the person who contracted the code to be written is granted an implied license to use the deliverable. In the case of compiled code, say a Java JAR, the implied license only extends to the JAR, since they can use the API contained within it without your involvement. However, they do not automatically get an implied license to the code that was written to create that JAR. If they were to say, want to hire a different contractor to take over maintenance of the project, they could not require you to give that new contractor the source code to the JAR. Now, many contractors will do that at the onset as a show of good faith, but they are not legally bound to do so. Again, this is only based on my experience and extensive conversations I had with my IP attorney when I had to deal with a couple situations arising from people unrightly demanding my proprietary code from me, so depending on your state and local statutes, ymmv. Nick On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 12:45 PM, Jeffry Houser <jef...@dot-com-it.com> wrote: > On 8/26/2014 1:00 PM, Alex Harui wrote: > >> Thanks Jeffry, >> >> One followup question: My understanding is that a contractor "must" have >> the option of doing non-client work. >> > As lubricious as it sounds; a lot of contracts I am provided by employers > [bu default] they own everything I do regardless of whether it is done for > them or not. I, personally, have never signed a contract like that. And I > cannot imagine a company trying to enforce such a thing on a contractor. > > The whole thing boggles my mind. > > > If that's true, if you found an SDK >> bug while working for a client, would you "stop the clock", fix the bug, >> then "start the clock" again? >> > I would try to get approval for the client to pay for the bug fix. :-) > But, in lieu of that I'd stop the clock. > > > If >> the fix is owned by the client, the client may need to give permission for >> the fix to be contributed to Apache. >> > > Agreed! > > > -- > Jeffry Houser > Technical Entrepreneur > http://www.jeffryhouser.com > 203-379-0773 > >
