RE: Intellectual Property

["Heidi Waterhouse" <HWaterhouse -at- mqsoftware -dot- com>]

I have run into contracts like this before. I do not sign something that broad. What I do is talk to my contact point and explain that I do not want the company to own my love poems. Usually, I try to phrase it as sort of a chummy us-against-the-lawyers kind of thing. It's funny when they think about it that way.

Then we rewrite the contract to say that they own everything that relates to the business, except for portfolio materials. If the phrase 'portfolio materials' makes them nervous, we spell out what kind of copies I can take, and whether or not I can leave them with interviewers or post them on the net. I am always sure to negotiate portfolio rights at the job offer, because while you are leaving, you are not in a strong position.

Usually, when I am presented with a contract, I take it as boilerplate that can be modified. I also modify contracts that ask for the right to run total background checks, since I doubt a driving test should affect my technical writing. This has never lost me a job that I know of. In fact, some interviewers are shocked when they read what I am asked to sign.

Heidi Waterhouse
Technical Writer
MQSoftware, Inc

> Forwarded anonymously on request:
> I have just got my contract of employment (moving from contract to
> permanent work at the same company) and noted that the intellectual
> property section requires everything I do while employed by 
> my company to
> become the property of the company.
> 
> I do a fair bit of writing outside the company. It's 
> unrelated to the work
> I do *for* the company (not even in the same ocean, let alone the same
> boat).
> I don't use company property (I have my own computer), I don't do it
> inside my working hours, and I don't do it on company 
> premises. I'm fairly
> sure that if I showed what I write to the management they 
> would agree that
> my company has no reason to claim it, but I don't want to 
> have to do that:
> I just want what I write on my own equipment, in my own time, 
> to belong to
> *me*. Not a lawyer, not expecting legal advice from this list, just
> wondering: is it worthwhile rocking the boat to have them change that
> clause, or just leave it be and rely on it being highly 
> unlikely that the
> company would deem my own work worth claiming and if they 
> tried I can't
> see how they could win? (I live in the UK, but as I said, not 
> asking for
> legal advice...)

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