ryu_masamune posted:

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Intellectual Property has often been established with employment contracts stating that productive ideas, processes, technologies, etc you come up with are the property and for sole use of your employer. Courts have upheld these contracts as valid because this is in consideration for employment (even though these contracts are more often than not not part of the offer letter or job description, but rather part of orientation or some HR procedure). Now, however, many of these contracts are being applied to vendors by proxy, through parent contracts between companies.

As there are a lot of techies and devs here, my curiosity is: What do you think is your intellectual property and, as a matter of course, do you know/think you are under IP implications?

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Jezza_Belle posted:

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ryu_masamune posted:

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Intellectual Property has often been established with employment contracts stating that productive ideas, processes, technologies, etc you come up with are the property and for sole use of your employer. Courts have upheld these contracts as valid because this is in consideration for employment (even though these contracts are more often than not not part of the offer letter or job description, but rather part of orientation or some HR procedure). Now, however, many of these contracts are being applied to vendors by proxy, through parent contracts between companies.

As there are a lot of techies and devs here, my curiosity is: What do you think is your intellectual property and, as a matter of course, do you know/think you are under IP implications?

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I can tell you, I know a lot of devs doing stuff on their own time that are keeping their mouths shut about what they're doing, because companies are latching onto the stuff they are developing at home.

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Steelwind_Oo posted:

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Jezza_Belle posted:

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ryu_masamune posted:

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Intellectual Property has often been established with employment contracts stating that productive ideas, processes, technologies, etc you come up with are the property and for sole use of your employer. Courts have upheld these contracts as valid because this is in consideration for employment (even though these contracts are more often than not not part of the offer letter or job description, but rather part of orientation or some HR procedure). Now, however, many of these contracts are being applied to vendors by proxy, through parent contracts between companies.

As there are a lot of techies and devs here, my curiosity is: What do you think is your intellectual property and, as a matter of course, do you know/think you are under IP implications?

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I can tell you, I know a lot of devs doing stuff on their own time that are keeping their mouths shut about what they're doing, because companies are latching onto the stuff they are developing at home.

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That is a whole different beast entirely. I would never sign anything that said everything I did while contracted to them was theirs. I have too many things going at once. Any agreement I make is specifically regarding work done for the client.

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Steelwind_Oo posted:

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It is situational for me. When I am working for a client designing something it is his dime, his requirements and ultimately his product. If I am working for a client doing general IT and I see a need and fill it with something from my collection of bits and pieces then they have every right to continue to use it but it is mine. This all changes if there is a contract, of course. Once paper is signed I stick to the letter of it.

Current client is a good example they went all legal on me last year about everything I do belongs to them. I'm fine with that and already considered most of my dev work their property but it did change how I operate with them. I also manage all their IT in two physical locations with tons of remoters/telecommuters. In the past I would yank out a script, tweak it, then install it on a server to solve an administrative issue I ran into. It would take all of half an hour total. Now though I design a new script from scratch then all the subsequent testing and deployment phases and it takes much longer. This is because I want no problems down the road if they go all legal-fu on me and try to do a hostile severance of relationship. If it happens, not that I expect it, I will know exactly what is theirs and what is mine and there will be a clear line between them.

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Jezza_Belle posted:

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Steelwind_Oo posted:

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Jezza_Belle posted:

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I can tell you, I know a lot of devs doing stuff on their own time that are keeping their mouths shut about what they're doing, because companies are latching onto the stuff they are developing at home.

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That is a whole different beast entirely. I would never sign anything that said everything I did while contracted to them was theirs. I have too many things going at once. Any agreement I make is specifically regarding work done for the client.

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I'm speaking of salaried workers.

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ryu_masamune posted:

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Appreciate the responses: but this is where the water is getting murkier. A number of vendor/contracting firms aren't asking for these anymore because of blanket IP contracts signed between the firm and the customers. Said contracts haven't reached appelate court challenges (yet), but are construed by some drafters as binding.

Where I tend to find issues with current IP-centric thought is in the way it overlooks equity. As an example:

Win7 introduced the next evolution in Dr. Watson troubleshooting but making packs that automatically look up errors and bugs in a MS service farm, and return with automatic/ghosted fixes or little pop-ups telling you how to address the issue. This is brilliant. It saves the end user support costs for common issues and also saves MS a tremendous amount money paying for first tier Help Desk resources. I'm also willing to bet the Dev that thought this up and evangelized it until it was built started recording metrics to put a $ value on how much this tech has saved the company in operating costs (and as Win7 is more expensive than previous, etc, perhaps an attributed $ value to the sales of the product).

Now, if a salesperson were responsible for generating let's say $15,000,000 in sales, they'd be experiencing quite a large commission. This Dev, however, likely did get a promotion and probably a bonus - but we're not talking about the levels comparable to a commission.

I also think about more famous Devs or producers like Sid Meier or Kai who were able to create blockbuster products, but retained royalties - but that sort of thing doesn't happen today. Blockbuster products come out from blockbuster studios, sure - but the guy who drove it isn't getting famous unless he paid to have it made himself.

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Brother_Tempus posted:

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Intellectual property is a coercive monopolistic privilege granted by the state, it can only exist under threat of force hence it is immoral becuase people must suffer for it to exist and be used.

It is slavery of knowledge, nothing more

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Gibbon_raver posted:

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Brother_Tempus posted:

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Intellectual property is a coercive monopolistic privilege granted by the state, it can only exist under threat of force hence it is immoral becuase people must suffer for it to exist and be used.

It is slavery of knowledge, nothing more

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Gibbon_raver posted:

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Brother_Tempus posted:

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Intellectual property is a coercive monopolistic privilege granted by the state, it can only exist under threat of force hence it is immoral becuase people must suffer for it to exist and be used.

It is slavery of knowledge, nothing more

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Brother_Tempus posted:

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Gibbon_raver posted:

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Brother_Tempus posted:

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Intellectual property is a coercive monopolistic privilege granted by the state, it can only exist under threat of force hence it is immoral becuase people must suffer for it to exist and be used.

It is slavery of knowledge, nothing more

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You ad hominem fallacy is noted as well as your lack of any proof to disprove my statement

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Brother_Tempus posted:

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Gibbon_raver posted:

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Brother_Tempus posted:

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Intellectual property is a coercive monopolistic privilege granted by the state, it can only exist under threat of force hence it is immoral becuase people must suffer for it to exist and be used.

It is slavery of knowledge, nothing more

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You ad hominem fallacy is noted as well as your lack of any proof to disprove my statement

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Gibbon_raver posted:

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other than the extremism of your opinion, since you presented a premise, then the burden of proof is upon you.

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TickyAtack posted:

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I, like BT, want communism of knowledge.


No idea will be our own, it will be shared evenly amongst the collective, as will any benefits of said ideas.

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TheUnholyGhost posted:

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Working in IT, and for a major company, I knew before I signed my name on the dotted line that anything I create while being on the company's dime, is the company's property. They let us know every year in mandatory training.

It's the way it is. You don't like it? You don't have to work there.

In the healthcare, financial, and technology industries...there are reasons for this.

Intellectual communism just isn't feasible.

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Brother_Tempus posted:

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Gibbon_raver posted:

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other than the extremism of your opinion, since you presented a premise, then the burden of proof is upon you.

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IP does not exist in nature like inalienable rights do, it is an artificial construct that lacks consent from all parties involved

This lack of consent means there must be a means to coerce all those who do not consent to accept the terms of the construct. The power of force is granted to the institution of government and so government is granted the power to grant and enforce IP through force [ ie imprisonment or wealth confiscation ]

Since this construct designates only one individual the rights to distribute the identified goods, it becomes a monopoly. This monopoly is immoral because it attempts through the use of force provided by the state to stop individuals from sharing knowledge amongst each other, thus enslaving the knowledge to just one master

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Gibbon_raver posted:

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Brother_Tempus posted:

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Gibbon_raver posted:

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other than the extremism of your opinion, since you presented a premise, then the burden of proof is upon you.

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IP does not exist in nature like inalienable rights do, it is an artificial construct that lacks consent from all parties involved

This lack of consent means there must be a means to coerce all those who do not consent to accept the terms of the construct. The power of force is granted to the institution of government and so government is granted the power to grant and enforce IP through force [ ie imprisonment or wealth confiscation ]

Since this construct designates only one individual the rights to distribute the identified goods, it becomes a monopoly. This monopoly is immoral because it attempts through the use of force provided by the state to stop individuals from sharing knowledge amongst each other, thus enslaving the knowledge to just one master

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I do not see any "proof"

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Brother_Tempus posted:

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Gibbon_raver posted:

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Brother_Tempus posted:

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[quote=Gibbon_raver]other than the extremism of your opinion, since you presented a premise, then the burden of proof is upon you.

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IP does not exist in nature like inalienable rights do, it is an artificial construct that lacks consent from all parties involved

This lack of consent means there must be a means to coerce all those who do not consent to accept the terms of the construct. The power of force is granted to the institution of government and so government is granted the power to grant and enforce IP through force [ ie imprisonment or wealth confiscation ]

Since this construct designates only one individual the rights to distribute the identified goods, it becomes a monopoly. This monopoly is immoral because it attempts through the use of force provided by the state to stop individuals from sharing knowledge amongst each other, thus enslaving the knowledge to just one master

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I do not see any "proof"

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