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Subject:Re: Article on Contracting vs Employee From:Jo Francis Byrd <jbyrd -at- byrdwrites -dot- com> To:Scottie Lover <iluvscotties -at- mindspring -dot- com> Date:Sat, 26 Feb 2000 16:17:49 -0600
One of the reasons to read your contracts carefully!
If the contract makes a statement that anything you write belongs to the
company, cross out that statement and write in the margin a statement to the
effect that you retain ownership to whatever you do on your own time that is not
related to that company. Then sign/initial it. I have yet to have a company
balk.
Jo Byrd
Scottie Lover wrote:
> At 04:23 PM 02/26/2000 -0500, Doug Isenberg wrote, in part:
> ... intellectual property ownership ... In general, ... the copyright in work
> prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment is owned by
> the employer under U.S. law -- but work performed by an independent contractor
> is owned by the independent contractor (absent an agreement/contract to the
> contrary).
>
> This is unpleasantly true -- and many employers make it known that anything
> written by any of their employees (even at home on a weekend) belongs to the
> employer. That is one immediate advantage to changing jobs every so often ...
> e.g., if you've only had one employer since college, he is going to claim
> everything you've done as his property. However, if you've had three
> employers in thirty years, neither can claim with absolute certainty that
> something was written while you worked for them, so the subject is very
> unlikely to even arise.
