October 24, 2006
Viacom: Work for Us? We Own You.
Product:Employee agreement at Viacom. Our employee contracts included a clause that made Viacom the owner of any thing we ever created anywhere in the “universe,” in “perpetuity.”
Lowpoints: Based on this agreement, which I had to sign to work there, I could be in the Alpha Centauri system creating the ultimate cheeseball recipe, and Viacom would be the proud owner of that. Granted, it was a creative department, and I’m sure they wanted the lion’s share of any new ideas/shows/products anyone came up with, but the fact that they would own something I did on my own time, even if I were no longer with the company (which I’m not, hence the free writing), kind of irked me.
Highpoints: Nothing really, except verify my belief in the limitless corporate greed gripping our nation.
Thanks, r.w.
Readers: please comment and feel free to contribute your own tale of EULA/waiver/consent astonishment via email or this form.
Without seeing the actual wording of the contract it’s hard to comment but in my general experience the “perpetuity” component of the clause typically refers to ownership of the ideas you have while working there - not your ideas in perpetuity.
It just prevents you from having a great idea through your work there and quitting to go develop it. Very common in a creative or technical industry.
Once you quit though your ideas are largely your own again. If you have external projects or ideas that you’re working on outside of work, and aren’t related to your work in any way I highly recommend asking them to sign something excluding those ideas from your contract. I’ve done that for a few developers over the years who were in my employ.