It’s Lawyer time at work again. Every once in a while the Legal Department up at corporate will feel the need to remind us peons they still exist.
This usually takes the form of mandatory training to be followed up by the Signing Of The Forms. The Signing Of The Forms is great fun where we are all given a big Stack of Forms that we are Expected To Read. The Forms contain a wealth of information telling us how if we like our pants, and do not want them sued off us, we will not engage in naughty things like selling company secrets or talking to the press. This year they added that we should have a waiver at any party we throw, lest one of our guests think this may be An Official Function Of The Company. That caused much merriment.
Last time, a new Form found its way into The Stack Of Forms. This new Form told us we must list any Inventions we had created prior to our time with The Company. Being a puckish sort, I listed that I had invented The Orbiting Death Ray. I submitted the Form, fully expecting that I would be subsequently instructed to fill out The Form correctly, and without the mirth. Such instructions never came.
Now - two years later, as I sit staring the Prior Inventions Form, I ask myself a question that I do not think anyone had ever had to ask himself before:
“Which would get me in more trouble - listing the The Orbital Death Ray as an invention of mine, or not listing it?”
Well, if you were to actually invent an Orbiting Death Ray during your work for the company, and then claim you had previously invented it and point to the signed form, they could probably get’cha for some kind of fraud or another.
The moral of the story is, retirement is the proper time of life to construct an Orbiting Death Ray.
Leave the Orbital Death Ray off this year, but add a Hypnosis Mind Control Ray. If someone calls you on the missing Death Ray, explain that the Mind Control Ray must have made you forget it.
I do love “The Signing of the Forms”. This year, I had to swear that I would use strong passwords for my company software logins.
Sure, on Maus Magill’s personal time line. But he did/will do the work in 1969, taking a vacation from the elevated global temperatures when the Betelgeuse Supernova event finally reaches here in 2048.
Well, he went a little crazy with the time travel, with the end result of already having built it before he was half finished. So he has/is/will be going to build the thing in the past, while he’s older than… man figuring out tense to use is too confusing… let’s just say it’s already been built by the future in the past.
I worked at a company that had a truly hideous IP agreement. According to this agreement, I was required to submit an invention disclosure to the IP folks for any idea I had, on or off the clock, related or unrelated to my job, that might possibly be patentable.
Oh, yeah, about then the PTO ruled that sexual aids/toys could now enjoy patent protection!
So that if you come up with something they should have the rights to, because you developed it while working with them, you can’t claim it was something you’d already invented.
