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Ownership of Development Work While Under Agreement (self.freelance)

submitted ago by floatbit

I've been asked to sign a contract and in one of the sections it basically said, removing lawyer-speak, "Any development work you do while under agreement belongs to us. If you have development work that you would like exempted from this clause, list them in Page 10."

So on Page 10 I wrote "All development work not related to work requested by [Company]".

I think this is fine. What do you think?

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[–]philipmat 4 points5 points ago

If this is truly contract work, you need to have that paragraph removed or changed to say that they only own the work you do for them, and only after they paid for it. The exclusion list may be something palatable if you were to become an employee, but as a contractor that is not acceptable.

[–]elspic 1 point2 points ago

You should probably post exactly what it says, if possible, as well as give more info about in what capacity you'll be working for them. Will it be full time, per project, etc? If it's full-time, it's one thing for them to say that anything you develop during working hours belongs to them but, if you're just freelancing, an overly broad statement can completely screw you over.

I also wouldn't work with someone who wanted me to list out all of my projects aside from what I'm doing with them, which is none of their business but, "All development work not related to work requested by [Company]" is just as broad as "Any development work you do while under agreement" and might not give you that much protection.

[–]floatbit[S] 0 points1 point ago

It's contract work. I've updated my clause so it's more specific:

All code that is not part of [Company]'s projects.

[–]crasseffect 0 points1 point ago

This is probably copy-paste from a full-time employment agreement, or an over-zealous lawyer trying to "protect" the company to an unreasonable degree. But you can negotiate all parts of a contract just as much as your rate.

I would explain that as a contractor, you have multiple clients at the same time, and delete the clause from the contract. I use something along the lines of "copyright for the work commissioned by the client transfers to the client upon full payment".