Alan Meyer wrote:
As for me writing the contract and handing it to him, I'm a
hardworking but pretty obscure consultant, not a celebrity
programmer like Guido van Rossum or Linus Torvalds. I don't
think I could bear to watch the client's lawyers spilling their
martinis, rolling on the floor, laughing, and pointing at me.
You'd be surprised.
I recently was asked to sign a contract specifying that we (the company
I work for) wouldn't work directly, or indirectly(!), for the client's
competitors; we'd also be obliged to notify the customer of any and all
ideas we had while working for them, and sign over ownership of the
rights to such.
We're not a sole trader, but neither are we Microsoft or Apple. The
customer's first response was "But that's our standard contract,
everyone signs it!", which rang a little hollow when I pointed out that
they had a major typo which basically invalidated half the contract. Oops.
I just put my foot down and said I wouldn't sign the contract as it
stood. If they wanted a no-competitor clause, then they would have to
list each and every company they didn't want us to work for. They took
that clause out :)
They also changed the clause about ideas and improvements and limited it
to "related to such-and-such proteins in the field of biochemistry".
So I told the sys admin who went out to do the actual work, "If you have
any brilliant ideas related to biomedicine while you're on site, keep
your mouth shut." He came back and said "I had a great idea for customer
X... they should cure cancer!"
--
Steven
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