Google's $1M Challenge

No, because like most electrical engineers my EE work is not my property to enter a contest. It is the property of my employer.

"No, because like most electrical engineers my EE work is not my property to enter a contest. It is the property of my employer."

Amen to that. I will say, however, that my WIFE, who luckily chose NOT to take my name, has "invented" a few small things over the years. I just hope they are not so wildly popular or publicly exposed (such as that Google challenge) that anyone ever asks her any questions about them. <wink, wink, nudge, nudge>

Your EE work is intellectual property owned by your employer if: 1) The work is done while at your employer's facility, 2) Is done at home, with your labor charged to your employer, and/or 3) If the work directly makes use of knowledge you acquired from your employer.

Aside from that, the work is your property. For example, if you design communication circuits at work but at home you design a power supply unrelated to communication circuits, the power supply design is yours.

Have to agree there. IP is not the right of any company, even when you invent something at the office. Documented court case at a Uni in Au and the court found that IP is the property of the person who thought about it and created it. The outcome is: No company can own the ideas generated in a persons head.

However, if that said person uses company time, resources, materials, the company has a right to charge for this or have a partial claim to the IP.

This claim that a company can own your Intellectual Property is a myth, that people go along with as they do not know the laws and they sign a contract, mistakenly, passing all rights to their ideas to a 3rd party. It is quite illegal. This is also why people do not invent things anymore, except people employed just to invent on company time.

But, courts being courts and companies having the capital to to fight cases.....? And the USA wanting to own the world and its resources.....

http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/intel1_e.htm

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100505165609AAe3ru6

http://www.business.qld.gov.au/business/support-tools-grants/tools/intellectual-property-info-kit/browse/employees-contractors/ownership

Learned the hard way about this small fact of life. IP is yours alone, not the employers.

You're sort of late for the party.

Million dollar challenge.

no kidding

It calls for a new concept in design.....and I'm thinking the design would be worth considerably more than $1M....Now if they would grant a million dollars to anybody willing to work on the concept, that might be different....

If Google would give me $1M, I'd be happy to develop this for them.