Copyright is automatically the employer's in the UK: the term is "in the course of employment", and no contractual language is required. The employer is effectively the author.
What that term means is a matter of case law, and is different if you are contracted / self-employed. Typically it is interpreted in a pro-employer manner, and if you are employed to write code then then assume that all the code you write is your employer's.
"in the course of" meaning, related to. personal work on personal time is not 'In the course of" employment. It's that latter bit that the GP is obviously asking about. The contract he linked has especially egegrious language.
It's not worth negotiating IMO. Any employer that even tries to get such language in is showing their cards.
The plain reading meaning of "in the course of" is not the case law, though, it has established precedent - and most of that favoured the employers in question. I don't know of a case that took into account "personal time" as being relevant, and most salaried employees are not paid on the basis of hours worked.
The typical contractual language does go beyond the established case law, but not by as far as you seem to suggest.
> most salaried employees are not paid on the basis of hours worked
In my experience salaried IC's in the UK are explicitly contracted for 40 hour weeks, excluding pensions, bonus, shares, etc.
It is only when you get on managerial tracts and C-Level that you have some form of hours exemption which means no OT and that implicitly you 'could' work 24/7.
I don't know about that. "in the course of employement" is used for various things. For example, if you get injured "in the course of employement", would that include if you fall from your bike on a sunday ride? I don't think so. So I believe it naturally exclude work that you do on your own time, in your house, on your computer.
> Typically it is interpreted in a pro-employer manner, and if you are employed to write code then then assume that all the code you write is your employer's.
Hmm, this makes me feel that having one's own company in addition to any other employment and writing off time spent working on open source for it could be a way around this. Of course, then you get into the whole non-compete mess...
Red Hat has an explicit clause in the contract allowing work on open source projects. As always best to consult a lawyer (not one connected to the company) if this is likely to be important to you.
Would you, or somebody working, or who had worked for Red Hat be willing to copy paste that clause, or contract, redacted of course so we could use it as an example.
Red Hat being who they are, their approach is extremely relevant to this situation.
I did try to dig out the contract just now to see if I had a digital copy of it, but I don't think I do. It's likely to be a two decade old printed copy instead. I think you need to talk to a lawyer rather than trying to do this on the cheap. Your lawyer has your interests at heart, no one else does. If you're a member of a union (Prospect being a good one for digital workers) then they will have lawyers you can consult for free.
I will talk to a lawyer as well... but I'm really interested to see something concrete too. I've asked many times but I've never actually received an example of what an actual contract had written on it.
13.8. $COMPANY and any Group Company will not attempt to claim copyright, intellectual property rights, nor patent right to any creation done outside of working hours (also known as employees free time), outside of the premises, and not using any $COMPANY facilities, as long as any such creation does not relate to the employees current responsibilities, and as long as it does not directly compete with $COMPANY business model and business activities.
13.9. As long as you do not go against clause 13.8, you are not obligated to disclose to us your creations.
But this is just my wishful thinking of mine that nobody replied to... and not something that I've actually managed to get written and signed. What I'd like to see is a concrete example of such a clause in a real, existing, signed by both parties, actual contract.
Got to watch out with this one. My past experience is that even approving a PR on the company Wifi internet caused a lot of discussion regarding the use of company facilities
Company WiFi falls under their "equipment"/"facilities" as far as I'm concerned and it's fair for the company to be upset about you using it for your personal benefit in my opinion.
What that term means is a matter of case law, and is different if you are contracted / self-employed. Typically it is interpreted in a pro-employer manner, and if you are employed to write code then then assume that all the code you write is your employer's.