Question for California IP/employment law experts -
1) would you have expected the IP-sharing agreement between MS and OpenAI to contain some provisions for employee poaching, within the constraints allowed by California (?) law?
2) California law has good provisions for workers' rights to leave one company and go to another, but what does it all for company A to do when entering an IP-sharing relationship with company B?
INAL, but I’ve executed contracts with these provisions.
In my understanding, if such a clause exists, Microsoft employees should not solicit OpenAI employees. But, there’s nothing to stop an OpenAI employee from reaching out to Sam and saying “Hey, do you have room for me at Microsoft?” and then answering yes.
Or, Microsoft could open up a couple hundred job reqs based on the team structure Sam used at OpenAI and his old employees could apply that way.
But it wouldn’t be advisable for Sam to send an Email directly to those individuals asking him to join him at Microsoft (if this provision exists).
But maybe he queued everything up prior to joining Microsoft when he was able to solicit them to join a future team.
Thanks - good answer. At the very least it seems like something to keep lawyers busy for a long time, unless everyone can ctrl-z back to Thursday. I am thinking though that this is a risk of IP-sharing arrangements - if you can't stop the employees from jumping ship, they're dangerous
