I'm fortunate enough to have a friend who is an employment lawyer and as a favor will read through any new employment contract before I sign it.
She'll point out any clauses (not just IP clauses) designed or phrased in such a way as to be unfair in the employer's favor, and will suggest alternative language that protects both them and me.
I have yet to encounter an employer who wouldn't accept a few small changes to an overly broad IP clause, and print and sign a fresh copy of the contract with the changes incorporated.
My current employer took very little convincing to accept the idea that they only wanted the IP created for them, not all IP created during the period of my employment.
After all, as I pointed out, they have no more interest in owning the code or design of my block association's website than I have in giving it to them. And it's unreasonable to expect me to cease to be its maintainer just because of a job switch from a fashion startup to an entertainment industry startup. As long as I don't work on it during work hours or using a work computer/internet/etc, why should they care what I do with my evenings and weekends?
So they accepted a modification. Of course, we might have trouble if I tried to compete with them in some way. But even if in my spare time I create a tool or library that eventually ends up being useful in building their own software, I retain the IP to that library. I might not get away with licensing something like that to them for a fee (good faith cuts both ways), but if it's already BSD licensed anyway, they can add it as a dependency and everyone's happy.
And if I want to be paid for contract work for an unrelated startup on weekends, well, that wasn't the use case I used to convince them. But the contract modifications give me the right to do so without turning the IP over to them. And again, if it's not competing, why should they care?
TLDR: Read and understand contracts before you sign them. Get help understanding if you need it. Don't sign something you don't want to be held to the letter of. Sometimes employers are flexible.
She'll point out any clauses (not just IP clauses) designed or phrased in such a way as to be unfair in the employer's favor, and will suggest alternative language that protects both them and me.
I have yet to encounter an employer who wouldn't accept a few small changes to an overly broad IP clause, and print and sign a fresh copy of the contract with the changes incorporated.
My current employer took very little convincing to accept the idea that they only wanted the IP created for them, not all IP created during the period of my employment.
After all, as I pointed out, they have no more interest in owning the code or design of my block association's website than I have in giving it to them. And it's unreasonable to expect me to cease to be its maintainer just because of a job switch from a fashion startup to an entertainment industry startup. As long as I don't work on it during work hours or using a work computer/internet/etc, why should they care what I do with my evenings and weekends?
So they accepted a modification. Of course, we might have trouble if I tried to compete with them in some way. But even if in my spare time I create a tool or library that eventually ends up being useful in building their own software, I retain the IP to that library. I might not get away with licensing something like that to them for a fee (good faith cuts both ways), but if it's already BSD licensed anyway, they can add it as a dependency and everyone's happy.
And if I want to be paid for contract work for an unrelated startup on weekends, well, that wasn't the use case I used to convince them. But the contract modifications give me the right to do so without turning the IP over to them. And again, if it's not competing, why should they care?
TLDR: Read and understand contracts before you sign them. Get help understanding if you need it. Don't sign something you don't want to be held to the letter of. Sometimes employers are flexible.