Comment by Animats
6 years ago
Did you sign Google's visitor agreement? Did you read Google's visitor agreement. You give up some IP rights by signing that. This is a case where it matters. When I visited Google, I refused to sign. They just give you a badge that said you didn't sign.
Unless you've been visiting other offices from the one I've been visiting, the agreement pretty much says:
* No taking photographs or video without permission.
* Don't disclose things you see in the office outside the office
It's literally 3 sentences, and they have handy little icons next to each.
I see nothing about IP rights assignment or anything of the sort.
But different companies use different forms of visitor NDA — and lawyers purely love to load up contract forms with "protective" language to show how knowledgeable they are. This can be dangerous to counterparties; Stanford, in effect, lost part-ownership of a patent for HIV diagnostic testing because a Stanford investigator signed a visitor NDA that included IP-assignment language [0]. The case went all the way to the (U.S.) Supreme Court (about a tangential statutory issue).
The lesson: Always RTFA before signing it (where the A stands for the agreement), because sadly there's no such thing as an accepted, named standard.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_University_v._Roche_M...
Your comment is incredibly misleading. This wasn't the "you came by our office for lunch" NDA. This was the "you worked here for a while, and we trained you and taught you our techniques, which you later used in an invention" NDA.
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Same experience here, perhaps there's a different agreement for social visits and commercial meetings.
> Did you read Google's visitor agreement. You give up some IP rights by signing that.
Curious if you remember the wording/page number on the visitor agreement? It'll help people to be on the lookout when they visit Google.
On that terminal thing near the big cafeteria? they just clicked something that was obviously android and handed me one.
I guess they agreed on my behalf?
No, it just confirms who the person is. No agreement is presented on that device (I am a Googler who has guests now and then).
> Did you read Google's visitor agreement. You give up some IP rights by signing that.
I guess the "don't be evil" thing is already well down the toilet.
What's that all about? A new form of tribute when you're called upon to kiss Google's ring?
You skipped over the interesting bit: "they just give you a badge that said you didn't sign".
I'm pretty sure all companies do similar.
> I'm pretty sure all companies do similar.
1) that's false
2) that doesn't make it less evil, let alone acceptable
No, Google would be among a handful of companies to do so. Very few companies in the US have meaningful access control to the workplace, and a tiny portion of them request visitors sign an agreement like the one described at the beginning of this thread. It seems like a power play by Google, akin to how Amazon requests drivers licenses when visiting.
It might be common in SV but definitely not all.
Do you need to sign in blood, or is blue ink ok?