Today, I saw an article on Github’s IP arrangement with its software engineers. It got super popular on HN and for a good reason: IP laws are hell for software developers.

If you’re a new developer, want to get into the field, or just want to hear a nightmare story, stay tuned.

What is IP and why should we care?

Before we get into the nitty gritty of my story, let’s define a few things. IP stands for intellectual property. An easy way of looking at IP in terms of development is:

> Any process, algorithm, or unique code that a developer creates.

A company pays a developer to create unique code, algorithms, and processes and then keeps rights to that code or whatever it is. This makes sense. Someone asks you to create an app, they pay you for it, and they own exclusive rights to that app.

The issue often comes up regarding where those IP rights extend to:

Does a company own IP to projects you worked on but were not assigned to? Does a company own your IP if you worked on it during work hours? Does a company own your IP if you worked on it using company equipment?

Things get a little harrier from there because there are lots of in-between situations such as:

If you use your own equipment for work, does the company still retain IP rights off-hours or possibly even during hours? If you had the idea for something while working, does the company retain IP rights or the individual? What if you develop something during a lunch break? What if your schedule is flexible? Can you “take a break” from work and work on your own IP? What if your IP is inspired by your work? or related to it? What if your IP could greatly benefit the company?

My Story

One of my first job was truly a nightmare. I reference it in almost all of my tech-related articles. It was a job at a Marketing company and I worked as a WP developer. As the sole technical person sitting in a room full of non-tech people, it was a nightmare bridging the gap.

IP was definitely a big gap there. The founders of the company didn’t have an issue with their own IPs. They owned a stake at the company and so everything they did was devoted to the company. Other employees didn’t really deal with IP issues (but rather stuff like client management which can get as hairy, I’m sure).

When I first joined, I made it a stipulation in my contract that I’d be allowed to freelance in my free time. The job paid well but the company sought me out and I still had a few contracts hanging in the air that I had to fulfill. They agreed, I signed and work started a week later.

> I made it a stipulation in my contract that I’d be allowed to freelance in my free time.

I still make sure that contracts don’t stipulate that I can’t get income elsewhere. I have several friends who have this issue and miss out on a lot of opportunities that might not even be field-related.

About six months into the job, we reached a “checkpoint”. At this point, I was supposed to get a lot of the things that were promised to me when I joined:

a hireling to manage and spread (heavy)workload healthcare contract conversion to W2 more PTO higher pay

I was presented with a contract. 4/5 of the items were unfulfilled. The company did not grow enough to hire someone else…yet the work had significantly increased. The company never setup for W2s, it turns out, and everyone was contracted…so no healthcare either. The company could not afford a raise for me or anyone else, including the founders.

But they could bump my PTO from 7 days to 10 days.

I decided to take my wife’s advice and I poured over the contract over the weekend and found a few startling details. The first was a claim on any IP I may produce while being employed, on or off hours using or not using company equipment. It extended far beyond that to encompass ANY IP in ANY industry/field.

You read that right

> The company wanted to lay claim to any kind of technology or creative work I did.

I worked hard on a Wordpress boilerplate theme for months in my spare time. I wanted to create the ultimate theme to use for freelancing, my personal site, and the like. I learned A LOT about Wordpress during those months but also about LESS CSS and a few other technologies. I created pluggable modules for the theme and added support for several CSS frameworks should I want to use one of those.

I put in a lot of hard work into this. I could not imagine a company simply taking it away from me.

After reading over the contract, I went to speak to my boss.