works-for-hire

Can anyone offer legalese for retaining intellectual property as a programmer?

I was recently talking to one of the guys in charge of the contracts for employees. I kind of lamented about the work-for-hire clause that says anything I create at work, even if completely unrelated to the business, belongs to the business. For instance, if I write a tool that helps me do my job, even if that tool is totally generic, th...

Re-doing the same programming work as done on the job

I am a co-op at a company and I was tasked with patching Roumen Petrov's OpenSSH w/ x509 certificates patch (http://www.roumenpetrov.info/openssh/) to include one of the features in his wanted list: wildcards in Distinguished Names. On his site he says that he will gladly accept patches. After finishing, I asked my manager to implore th...