[TriLUG] Work for Hire (Was: [GoLugTech] legal question)

[Marc M]

Tarus, I think you have a clear advantage since you are incorporated,
and contracting yourself out. I believe it's tougher for those of us
who are individually, and without incorporation, job hunting the body
shops.

>>my point exactly.  I don't believe there are no benefits to
incorporation as one person says, when there are people doing it all
over the place, and my accountant tells me to the contrary.

The typical document I've run into isn't as all-encompassing as Marc M.
spoke of:

>>THANK GOD!  Well what I THINK I am finding out, is, that when you
are corp they HAVE to respect you - whether they do as a person or
not!  Because it changes the relationship from the traditional
paternalistic 'shut up and play by the rules' to a corp contracting
with another corp, as say for any other type of service (lawn, moving,
janitorial whatever).

That is my suspicion.  It has been validated somewhat by the fact that
the papers NOW coming from the recruiter aren't NEARLY as bad as they
were for W2.  And their W2 arrangement had no bennies anyway, just a
good hourly rate which is also higher as contract,  :) so no love lost
there...

 I (and I figure, most of us on the list) normally apply for
traditional system administration positions in which neither the
employer nor I expect to be writing something extensive or original
enough to merit ownership. The last document like this that I signed
covered only work done while in the employ of the company, and done on
company resources. They didn't push a non-compete clause or care what I
did outside work.

>>That's very humble of you.  However in a court of law or even when
signing a document,   (especially the one I mentioned) -- *ANY*
editing, scripting, writing of applets, etc., *COULD* be construed as
'works' for the company to own, not you.  You don't have to write JACK
for it to merit THEIR ownership!  This is a contract that wanted to
own ALL FUTURE SOFTWARE!!!!

This could be a problem later if you wanted to write a systems admin
book and include your favorite backup script that you have used at the
last 3 employers prior to this one (couldn't use it afterwards,
right?).  See what I mean?  It is getting more restrictive if you give
in.  Sure, I agree, you probably aren't gonna get sued over this
stuff, at least not in a timely manner, but it's the principle of the
thing!  How much of your future are you willing to sell off?  :)

The one time I did run into this problem, it was with a headhunting
firm wanting to farm me out to another company. They used the much
more
restrictive language, much like Marc M spoke about earlier. I
attempted to modify and they just "went away", ending communications
with no
further progress on the deal.

>> this scenario sucks b/c it seems like you have come so close to a
great thing. But as so many others have pointed out a great thing
isn't always what it appears to be.  If they are that big of jerks
then they aren't work **** and that is a beautiful thing to know up
front.  Now when that happens to me, I thank them for showing me their
true colors!

Fortunately for myself, later on I found that this wasn't a firm I
wanted to be associated with anyway. Seems that the entities pushing
the more draconian language (that likely wouldn't hold up in court)
are somewhat "grey" and skirting the ethical borders of business
anyway.

>>but aren't there a lot more of those types of businesses around
these days?  Or maybe the business climate has just seemed poisoned by
the Enrons et al.

However, I'll bet there are plenty of companies in the US employing
skilled admins or programmers to write code based on GPL'ed software who
think they own it, but in fact do not. Whether anyone cares or not
probably doesn't surface until a legal conflict results.

>>I completely agree.  I am looking forward to hearing stories coming
out of LOTS of clueless companies doing things like this.  The problem
comes when non technical 'suits' run the show and make decisons on
stuff like this.  I believe that smarter organizations will promote
people who are in the know, like programmers with many years of
experience, that tends to help.  Let them deploy 'their' new products,
only to find out that it really isn't 'theirs'!


JKB