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Thanks for this great article
Thanks for your comment Wesley Killough, have a nice day.
- Scott Baratta, Staff Member
you the topic for today's episode of engineering career TV is intellectual property the question comes from Sam as an experienced professional hello I'm a civil engineer from the San Francisco Bay Area I have a question about intellectual property in engineering and architecture having worked for different engineering design firms for over 10 years I've always signed an employment contract stating that I will not take any of their calculations or any creative work that I created during my time of employment now I'm well into my career and I'm wanting to do side work or even thinking about starting my own firm someday but since I took no plans calculations or details for my previous employers I really don't have a personal engineering library can you please clarify the boundaries of intellectual property for engineering employers and employees legally speaking as an engineering employee am I allowed can legally take anything from my employer for my own private practice if the answer is no plain and simple do you have any advice on how to build your own personal engineering library of details and calculations let me give you the typical disclaimer here I am NOT a lawyer so you need to talk to a lawyer and any advice I'm getting here it's just my own opinion and should be vetted by a lawyer and I will say that this is probably very specific to your geographic location as well Sam some states might have different laws around this some engineering licensing boards as well might have different rules than others here's my recommendation talk to a lawyer I don't care how much it costs you go to the lawyer explain your situation and what I would do from this point on in your career is before you sign anything I would have a lawyer draft some kind of clause that could be added into the contract that allows you to retain your own designs retain copyright or the right to use and transfer your own designs to future endeavors now there's probably going to be dissent about this when you present this to a company but the way that I would pitch it to them would be like this listen I'm interested in working for you I want to build this company I'm committed to you but at the end of the day anything could happen here and I'm going to be working hard creating libraries of details and calculations and if you decide to go in a different direction from me in a few years I want to protect my hard work it's going to make me more focused and more motivated here and so I've hired a lawyer to prepare this clause and I'd like to put it into my contract and that's the bottom line you might have a company say no and then you have to go work for another company but you know what in the long run Sam if you're going to build a business this is extremely valuable to you and I'm glad you raised this issue you want to retain as much of your own design work as possible so you can create your own library this is gold this can be really really valuable to your future one thing I've learned in doing business is that no matter how much it costs to retain a lawyer it can be worth a lot more than what they're charging you in the long run especially for something like this Sam I hope you found this helpful we have reached out to a couple of IP lawyers and we're going to try to get you a more detailed legal answer and possibly put it on one of our longer podcast episodes which we will link to in the show notes for this episode at engineering career TV I hope you found this episode of engineering career to be helpful remember you can go to engineering career coach com forward slash ask and submit your question this show is for you and I want you to take advantage of it you can find all of the episodes categorized by topic at engineering career TV if you would like to discuss issues like this and other engineering career goals and challenges I recommend you join the engineering mastermind an online support community that we have created for engineers at the engineer in mastermind comm for the price you can't get more specific targeted engineering career advice and assistance the engineering mastermind is not about helping you survive as an engineer it's about helping you thrive this is Anthony Fasano author of engineer your own success please subscribe to this show on YouTube or iTunes and I'll see you next week you
Thanks samtalurD your participation is very much appreciated
- Scott Baratta
About the author
I've studied ecological engineering at Rowan University in Glassboro and I am an expert in library. I usually feel calm. My previous job was transportation attendants I held this position for 27 years, I love talking about lotology (lottery ticket collecting) and guitar. Huge fan of Dixie D���Amelio I practice wrestling: freestyle and collect paper currency.
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