Contractual Errors
Posted: Wed 22 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Own Business, Thoughts, Work-related |2 Comments »I’ve just realised that my new employer has made a significant error with my contract.
I’m (as some of you may have noticed along the way) a web developer. Normally, a web developer’s contract will include stuff about Intellectual Property (IP) so that anything the developer creates for Company X still belongs to Company X when the developer leaves – and thus the developer can’t sell that same product to other companies.
Guess what my Company X has forgotten to do?
Yep – no IP clauses at all.
I’m not complaining – the main thing I’ll be writing for the next few months is something that is exceptionally saleable, and I can already see a fair old market for it outside the company. So, that might make life a bit more interesting over time…
If it’s not a large cmpany, you’re probably onto a good thing. If it is, they’ll be able to aford better lawyers than you, so it’s fairly inconsequential what it says in your contract (a document that is infinitely changeable at their whim so could easily be falsified if future circumstnaces dictate – and I’ve seen it happen!).
But still, I do wonder about HR operatives capabilities.
They’re a fairly big organisation, so yeah, they could almost certainly afford better lawyers. But I do have a printed (and dated) copy of the contract, along with my dated signature, so it’s kind of hard to change that side as well.
All the same, once I’ve written something, I can always rewrite it, so there’s similar functionality, but non-matching code, for example…