> I don't quite see that. If the company disclaims ownership of the > stuff that you create working on GCC as part of your job, well, they've > disclaimed ownership of it, regardless of the fact that you created it > while working on GCC as part of your job, no?
My point is that they aren't likely to DO that and it would be inappropriate to ask them to. Legal documents usually work out better the closer they match reality. > In that circumstance, a disclaimer from the employer is equivalent to a > semi-waiver of that part of your contract of employment for that part of > your work that they agree to disclaim; but equally, it is possible to > conceive being offered a contract of employment that did *not* require > you to assign any copyright to your employer in some or all of the > software you write while employed by them - unlikely, as ownership of IP > is one of the benefits to the employer that they get in exchange for the > money they pay you to work, but certainly not impossible or a legal > nonsense as far as I can see. I wouldn't call it "legal nonsense" and perhaps one could see some sort of unusual situation where it was the best approach, but normally doing it that way could open the door to all sorts of OTHER issues. For example, if the employee isn't being paid to do this work, then what IS he being paid for? Is the employee's salary a legiminate business expense? What about the R&D tax credit? Etc. To use a GCC analogy, we always tell people when writing machine descriptions to "not lie" and be as faithful to what the hardware actually does as possible. It's certainly possible to write MD files that don't do that, and historically many have, but when you do that, you risk adding kludge upon kludge to keep things working optimally. It's the same here: if you try to use a disclaimer when an assignment is the appropriate document, you may well find yourself trying to patch things up later.
