Google insists on intellectual property rights in 'projects personally performed on holidays by employees'

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Since we're talking about Google being less than nice towards its workers, here's a fun little story from my days there.There were two things that I really didn't like about Google at the time: The Google+ saga (realnames et al) , and the IP ownership policy.

— Hector Martin (@ marcan42) December 18, 2019

When working at Google, Martin spent his free time working on personal side projects. Among the side projects, there were some projects that belonged to Google before and others that were open source.

However, according to its policy, Google insisted on the intellectual property rights that Martin-related side projects that were being promoted outside of working hours were 'related to Google's business.'

This is, of course, completely ridiculous, but has become standard practice.Google's policy is based on CA Labor Code § 2870, which gives them ownership over anything that 'relates to Google's business'. SInce Google does everything, they get to claim everything .

— Hector Martin (@ marcan42) December 18, 2019

Google has an Invention Assignment Review Committee (IARC) process that allows employees to get permission to work on individual projects. Martin also submitted applications to IARC for two open source projects: AsbestOS, a Linux emulator running on PS3, and usbmuxd, which multiplexes connections to iOS devices via USB. The application for usbmuxd has been rejected. Since the email asking 'Reason for rejection' was ignored, Mr. Martin finally gave up working on the development of usbmuxd and said he took over the maintenance work.

A long wait later, AsbestOS was approved with a 'we don't want to have anything to do with this project' disclaimer.usbmuxd was rejected without an explanation.My follow-up email asking for clarification was ignored.

I ended up having to hand over maintainership of usbmuxd.

— Hector Martin (@ marcan42) December 18, 2019

When Mr. Dibona , an open source director at Google, was informed about issues related to IARC, Mr. Dibona closed out Mr. Martin from IARC and said that he would 'follow the employment contract.'

By DragonImages

However, when Martin carefully read Google's intellectual property clause, Google's intellectual property clause is based on the `` invention made by employees '' of California Labor Law Article 3.5-2870 discovered.

CA labor code says, in pseudolegalese:

You own THING you do on your own time without company equipment

IF NOT (
THING relates to the company's business
OR THING results from work you did for the company
)

— Hector Martin (@ marcan42) December 18, 2019

Martin says, “The producers have intellectual property rights for side projects that are done outside the working hours without using the company's intellectual property / equipment. The company has intellectual property rights for projects done in time. Under normal circumstances, according to California Labor Code, Article 3.5, 2870, Martin should have intellectual property rights for side projects conducted outside working hours. However, because Google has intellectual property related to various science and technology, Martin said, “Since any side project started by a Google employee is related to Google ’s intellectual property, Google knows it. You have a property right. '

Martin said, “There should be no intellectual property rights on the company for side projects outside of working hours, especially if it has nothing to do with the work you are responsible for.” I am commenting.