Pretty sure I will be asking a lawyer, but I want to learn more words and concepts first.
A possible new job wants to own any intellectual property I create and wants me to declare anything I want to keep as my own. This seems normal in my industry as they will be paying me to do some thinking.
Issue is that I have a number of ideas I have been developing. I am going to float some of them as products in my own time, though this may be years from now. Most of these are outside the current market for the company as far as I know.
How is this typically handled? I presume I don’t need to have copyrights or trademarks prior and can just list tentative titles.
I am also a little unclear on the spread between “intellectual property” and “an idea I am playing with”.
Thoughts? Concepts to investigate?
Edit: I did Internet search this, but I have not found working keywords.
Is the former employer of your friend trying to claim ownership of the project after laying him off??
No, that’s not the concern here. He’s getting job offers from new employers while he’s midway through this personal project, and he wants to make sure the new employers don’t have anything in their employment contracts that would end up grabbing it.
The old employers trying to claim it was also a concern, but that wasn’t what OP was concerned about so I didn’t mention it. He had a lawyer check over his old employment contract as well to make sure there wasn’t a problem there. As long as he’s not using proprietary tech retained from the old job (and he’s not) there’s no problem there.