IndieCade was awesome, and I highly recommend it to anyone for next year. No conference I’ve been too has such an interesting spectrum of creative people all doing really neat stuff. Even if some of it’s not your thing, the thoughtfulness and artistry behind all of the games, their creators, and all the other participants, should be. Only downside for me was being too tired to go to the final party, which by all accounts summed up IndieCade’s awesomeness appropriately.
Also, I’ve been meaning to post this link (forwarded by a friend a little while ago – thanks Bijan!) for those developers who work for big companies that want to pursue developing their own games outside of working hours and using their own resources, and are in California: California Labor Code Section 2870-2872.
Here’s part of it, entailing the legality of clauses employers force employees to sign that give all their work away to the employer:
2870. (a) Any provision in an employment agreement which provides
that an employee shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or her
rights in an invention to his or her employer shall not apply to an
invention that the employee developed entirely on his or her own time
without using the employer’s equipment, supplies, facilities, or
trade secret information except for those inventions that either:
(1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of
the invention to the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably
anticipated research or development of the employer; or
(2) Result from any work performed by the employee for the
employer.
(b) To the extent a provision in an employment agreement purports
to require an employee to assign an invention otherwise excluded from
being required to be assigned under subdivision (a), the provision
is against the public policy of this state and is unenforceable.
Hrm. I wonder if there’s something like that in MA…
(2) Result from any work performed by the employee for the
employer.
I speculate if an employer could successfully convince a jury/judge that knowledge gained during employment construes ‘a result from work performed for the employer’.
In reality, the judge would likely side with the employee, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
Huh?
Any provision [..] shall not apply to an
invention that the employee developed entirely on his or her […] except for those inventions that either:
(1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of
the invention to the employer’s business,
Doesn’t this say “a contract that gives ownership of inventions to the employer *totally applies* to employees of big game develoeprs developing indie games on the side?”
It has to tie to the work you’re doing and skills you’re using – so, if I’m working on the AI for an FPS at EA, working in my spare time on my own PC on the AI for an FPS is bad, but if I’m working on a casual game, it’s pretty hard to show that there’s research or development that could tie one to the other.
Interestingly, I was just going through a copy of the standard employment contract EA gave me when I left, as a reminder of what aspects of the NDA I was still contractually obligated by. I noticed a section in there that I very much did *not* see the first time (as I was keep an eye out for these things). It now explicitly mentions this part of the CA state code. At the end of the day, with CA being a right to work state, it’s the it’s pretty difficult for an employer to restrict your rights to find work (that doesn’t directly infringe on what you’ve done for them).