ICLA and CCLA -- was Experience with Contribution Agreements

[eduardo pelegri-llopart <pe...@calterra.com>]

(Follow-up to my mail from a while back)

We (RIM) have started using a slightly modified version of Apache's ICLA &
CCLA for our nascient Open Source projects.  So far, so good. But there  is
an angle where I could benefit again from your experience.

Some employee contracts have a variation of a statement that says "IP
generated by the employee in <different conditions> is owned by the
company".  Ignoring how/whether local laws (like California) void this... a
company can argue that they don't want their employees to sign ICLAs b/c
they don't own IP and thus only CCLAs are applicable.

ASF [1] explicitly indicates that its requiring both ICLA and CCLAs:
[1] http://www.apache.org/licenses/#clas

"Note that a Corporate CLA does not remove the need for every developer to
sign their own CLA as an individual, to cover any of their contributions
which are not owned by the corporation signing the CCLA."

Another argument for requiring both ICLA and CCLA is to cover contributions
from the individual after he or she has stopped working for the corporation
that signed the CCLA - without relying on the cooperation of the employee or
the employer to notify ASF of the change.


Am I interpreting correctly the practice used by ASF on this area?
Do you ever get challenged?  What do you do if you are?
Do you have a list of CCLA signatories anywhere? I only see the ICLA list.

Thanks,
  Eduardo

Re: ICLA and CCLA -- was Experience with Contribution Agreements

[Niclas Hedhman <ni...@hedhman.org>]

On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 3:45 AM, eduardo pelegri-llopart
<pe...@calterra.com> wrote:

> Some employee contracts have a variation of a statement that says "IP
> generated by the employee in <different conditions> is owned by the
> company".  Ignoring how/whether local laws (like California) void this... a
> company can argue that they don't want their employees to sign ICLAs b/c
> they don't own IP and thus only CCLAs are applicable.
>
> ASF [1] explicitly indicates that its requiring both ICLA and CCLAs:
> [1] http://www.apache.org/licenses/#clas
>
> "Note that a Corporate CLA does not remove the need for every developer to
> sign their own CLA as an individual, to cover any of their contributions
> which are not owned by the corporation signing the CCLA."

I think what your are talking about is covered in section 4 of the ICLA.


> Another argument for requiring both ICLA and CCLA is to cover contributions
> from the individual after he or she has stopped working for the corporation
> that signed the CCLA - without relying on the cooperation of the employee or
> the employer to notify ASF of the change.

That is also true. One could also argue that there are probably some
corner cases where the employees can not contract away all their IP
rights they are doing outside work (if that is not the case, one
should really consider moving to another place!! Slavery was supposed
to have be abandoned...)


> Am I interpreting correctly the practice used by ASF on this area?
> Do you ever get challenged?  What do you do if you are?

AFAIK, no.

> Do you have a list of CCLA signatories anywhere? I only see the ICLA list.

It is sitting in SVN. Not sure exactly what access rights you need.


Cheers
-- 
Niclas Hedhman, Software Developer
http://www.qi4j.org - New Energy for Java

I live here; http://tinyurl.com/3xugrbk
I work here; http://tinyurl.com/24svnvk
I relax here; http://tinyurl.com/2cgsug

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