Clarifying what would be outside the scope of employment, but related to the Company's business

[onionjake]

Are there any additional resources that could be linked to in order to help understand what is "within the scope of your employment" versus what is "relates to the Company's business" versus what is not related to the company business at all? It seems like understanding those phrases (I'm not a lawyer) are very important to understand what BEIPA is all about.

In the FAQ in the README.md a clarification is given about patents and seems to imply that unless the employer has specific patent objectives (and thus falling under the scope of employment), that under BEIPA the employee could in their spare time file patents for things they are doing within the scope of their employment (say some code they were asked to write) but that action of filing patents isn't within scope (the company didn't ask them to file patents) so the employee would own the patents? Is this an incorrect interpretation of how 'scope of employment' works?

[BenjamenMeyer]

Generally it's within the scope of your employment if:

• it's on company time or using company resources
• it's related directly (possibly even indirectly) to work the company does or you do for the company

So it's highly tied to what someone's job is or the company does and therefore harder to define specifically. There's probably a good amount of case law backing up the above (you'd have to consult a real lawyer or paralegal for that). This may also change more from jurisdiction to jurisdiction as a result.

HTH

[andres-mendez-b]

Thanks for the ideas @BenjamenMeyer , but because of how BEIPA is written, your first idea "it's on company time or using company resources" is not a proper clue because BEIPA specifies:

This is regardless of the time of day you did the work or whether or not you did it using your own equipment or whether or not you did the work in or outside a Company office.

And regarding "it's related directly (possibly even indirectly) to work the company does or you do for the company" I'm afraid that's not clear when you work for a company which provides coding services and they have thousands of employees. There can be many different projects and maybe one of them is somehow related to what you want to do as a personal project.

I think the best approach would be to report to the company what you want to do and get a quick response if that is approved as it is not related to the company's interests.

[BenjamenMeyer]

Thanks for the ideas @BenjamenMeyer , but because of how BEIPA is written, your first idea "it's on company time or using company resources" is not a proper clue because BEIPA specifies:

This is regardless of the time of day you did the work or whether or not you did it using your own equipment or whether or not you did the work in or outside a Company office.

And regarding "it's related directly (possibly even indirectly) to work the company does or you do for the company" I'm afraid that's not clear when you work for a company which provides coding services and they have thousands of employees. There can be many different projects and maybe one of them is somehow related to what you want to do as a personal project.

I think the best approach would be to report to the company what you want to do and get a quick response if that is approved as it is not related to the company's interests.

Honestly, you'd have to consult a lawyer to get a good, legal answer. And that answer will change between jurisdictions.

It would also be considered an undue burden to either side to get every single thought of a project one wants to do approved by the company or verified that it does not conflict with the company's interests - my guess is that you'd have a good chance of winning legally it'd just be potentially expensive. This is where good, clear IP policy from companies comes in play, and statements like the following are unhelpful and possibly even non-binding or illegal:

This is regardless of the time of day you did the work or whether or not you did it using your own equipment or whether or not you did the work in or outside a Company office.

Again, consult a lawyer in your own jurisdiction for accurate answers. That may pass muster in various EU countries while at the same time being all over the map between the numerous US jurisdictions.