Ownership
Intellectual property assignment
Decides who owns what you create. For someone with one job this is mostly theoretical. For someone with two it is the mechanism by which one employer ends up with a claim over work done for the other.
Where to find it
Usually a separate document: the proprietary information and inventions agreement, sometimes called a PIIA or confidentiality and invention assignment agreement.
Search your document for: assign inventions work product works of authorship conceived developed
Which version do you have?
Wording paraphrased for teaching. Yours will differ; the shape is what matters.
Usually fine
“Employee assigns to the Company all inventions relating to the Company's business that are developed using Company time, equipment, or Confidential Information.”
Narrow. Two conditions have to be true before their claim attaches, and clean separation of devices and information keeps you outside both.
Needs a question
“Employee assigns all inventions, discoveries and works of authorship conceived or reduced to practice during the term of employment.”
Broad on its face: it reaches work done on your own time, on your own machine, about something unrelated. Several US states restrict exactly this by statute and some require the employer to give you written notice of the limit. Worth a lawyer.
Stop here
“Employee assigns all inventions conceived during employment and for a period of twelve months thereafter, whether or not related to the Company's business.”
A trailing assignment reaching past your last day and explicitly covering unrelated work. Difficult to reconcile with a second role.
Ask this before you sign
- Is there a prior-inventions schedule, and did I leave it blank?
- Does my state limit assignment of inventions developed on personal time without company resources?
- Can the clause be narrowed to work related to the company's business?
What this clause means when you hold two roles
Reading the clause is one thing; knowing how it interacts with a second employer's agreement, where it sits in the self-audit, and what to do when two contracts disagree is the part that takes the work. That analysis, the agreement-review worksheet and the searchable library live in the course.
More in Ownership
- Prior inventions scheduleLists what you already owned before you joined, so it is carved out of the assignment. Most people leave it blank because they are signing on their first day and nobody explains it.
- ConfidentialityObliges you to protect the company's information, typically without a time limit for trade secrets.
Generic wording written for teaching, not copied from any real agreement. Employment law varies by country and state. This is not legal advice — see the disclaimer.