The employee and the company are obliged to stand by their agreements with each other. The time to negotiate the terms of the agreement is before you sign it, not after.

Best course of action here is the guy takes it as a lesson learned and reads his future employment contracts closer.

Companies aren't going to lose a good hire over a reasonable term change. I've heard the "this is non-negotiable", but when you get up to walk away, it becomes negotiable, as long as what you're asking for is reasonable.

So, if the OP was in California, his employer really had no leg to stand on, regardless of what he may have signed when he started the job.

In compliance with prevailing provisions of relevant state statutes, this agreement does not apply to an invention for which no equipment, supplies, facility, or trade secret information of the employer was used and which was developed entirely on the employee's own time, unless (a) the invention relates (i) to the business of the employer, or (ii) to the employer's actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development, or (b) the invention results from any work performed by the employee for the employer.

That language is probably straight from the statute, though I didn't check. Anyway, it would have to be written this way, or it would be an invitation to rampant abuse by employees. As it is I think it's very fair. Note especially the word "demonstrably".

Other things being equal, I would agree with you. But it seems like other things are far from equal in this case, because the project in question is in exactly the field that its author was being paid to work in by his employer.

If any related work that (the employee says) happens outside office hours belongs to the employee in that case, what is to stop someone from simply claiming that any good idea they have on the project their employer pays them to work on happened at home after hours, the prototype code they wrote to implement it also happened away from the office, and therefore they assert the rights to it personally and the employer had better pay them whatever they want or be prevented from using exactly the work they are already paying the employee to do for them?

I find it troubling that so many people are alright with signing away their personal rights.

So do I, but contracts are two-sided deals. The other side here is that software developers are typically paid a significant amount of money for their work already, and it seems fair to me that the person paying that money would expect clear rights to what they're paying for in return.

There is nothing to stop the employer and employee from incorporating some mutually agreeable condition that makes clear how the projects are split and who will get which rights, assuming such a mutually agreeable condition can be found. But as others have noted, for something that is so directly related to what an employee works on by day, there is an obvious conflict of interest.

The implications are the same, and in both cases, I am on the side of the employee.

Why would you think that? It's a completely different situation.

For the record, I have no problem with restricting someone from using trade secrets or disclosing other confidential information they learned as part of one job for the benefit of another (probably competing) employer.

I do have a problem with saying if you quit one job you can't then even work in the same industry for some period afterwards, unless a suitable amount of consideration is given in return.

As we often claim here, the idea itself is worth little. It is the implementation of that idea that matters more. There are ways to ensure that the implementation belongs to the company. In software for instance, whatever has been committed to the company's version control belongs to the company.

> Contracts are two-sided deals... it seems fair to me that the person paying that money would expect clear rights to what they're paying for in return.

Sure, they get the code. That's it. If that brings down the company, maybe they should have had a better business model. We don't have to bend over backwards to ensure that companies make a profit. Another forward-thinking, responsible company (such as RedHat) can take their place.

Laws should serve us first. Not corporate interests.

Not necessarily, if the employee already had similar code outside work that no-one at the office was aware of or understood but for which the employee could demonstrate holding significant rights in some reasonable way.

There are all kinds of ways that situation, or even enough ambiguity that the situation is a possibility, can backfire legally for the company. The best result for the employer in such a case is likely to be undertaking a significant amount of costly legal work and winding up with all the rights. There are many plausible and much worse outcomes.

Laws should serve us first. Not corporate interests.

False dichotomy is false.

Seriously, I've taken on whole HR teams over this kind of issue, and I won. I've walked away from potentially lucrative positions because I got a bad vibe about how the employer viewed work/life balance or had a dubious term about it in the contract and didn't seem likely to agree to change it. I really am the guy who should be totally on your side in this debate. So if this situation doesn't even convince someone like me to side with the employee, probably either it's not as simple as you're making out or your position is one-sided beyond the point of being reasonable.

It's not about personal freedom. It's about (and no insult intended) appearances. And this is damn sloppy.

As an employer I'd be suspect too.

Most often lots of the thinking is done before joining the company. In fact many times people are hired because their thinking in the field. In fact the company hiring me themselves benefit from the knowledge I might have acquired at another company. So that whole "we own your brain and ideas" is simply wrong in every sense of the way.

As an employer you have a product that product consist of some code.

If you can show that employer X took code y and implemented it into their project then you have a case, if not you don't really have a case IMHO (although I am sure it doesn't stop wealthy employers from doing so anyway)

P.S. I used to be an employer of 70 people myself.

These terms aren't binding, they're agreed upon. Neither party is liable for them, but they are part of the agreement. An agreement is held in good faith, and this faith was misplaced on the employer's part, and abused by the employee. No "rights" were "signed away", nobody here is beholden.

I wouldn't enter into a personal agreement like this, then make it a lie by doing something other than what was agreed upon, that's just a dick move. It's equivalent to breaking a promise to a friend.

You are speaking on a matter of what you feel is moral right, not what is law. As a matter of law, I know that New York State a decade ago was set up so that, by default, a professional employee (ie anyone who doesn't punch a clock and isn't a contractor) is considered "always at work". The default is that everything you do is owned.

That's a very naïve view and provably wrong in a lot of countries. Check with your local labor laws, you'll be surprised.