Wouldn't it be possible to create a trust (or even a corporation), transfer all of your IP to the trust and then appoint trusted third parties as trustees? There seems to be a world of difference between personally holding IP and being the sole beneficiary of a trust that holds IP.

For my part, I'll stick to working for employers with reasonable terms of employment.

Reasonable question, but I suspect the answer is, practically speaking, "no".

Two important things to remember about negotiating contracts: A) They are mainly about the spirit of the agreement, and B) If any of the language actually gets as far as being tested in a court and you're just an individual, you're probably already fucked.

Zynga/OMGPOP clearly think it's unreasonable for any of their employees to do any outside game work. When Shay said, "Hey, can have an exception for my pet project," they said no. If Shay had tried to find some behind-their-back trick, the best case is that they just wouldn't care.

The worst case is that they fire him and bring a suit to take the game from him. Whether or not they win, Shay probably can't afford to spend $100k or more on a lawsuit, not for a little side project. So if he's lucky he escapes with $5K in legal bills so that he can hand the game over to him and agree in writing never to utter the word "Zynga" again.

I'm not suggesting that this would work for subverting an agreement as it pertains to work done while an employee. The grandparent specifically referred to an employer demanding past work, presumably predating any business relationship.

Right. And I'm saying that doesn't matter.

Your approach might be enough to win a lawsuit. But he probably can't afford to fight a lawsuit, so whether or not he'd eventually win doesn't matter. Even if he could, it would be a hollow victory. He'd get to keep his modestly successful iPhone game, but it would cost him his job and maybe a year's salary on lawyers, plus 2-3 years of aggravation.

That would almost certainly work, but I suppose the proble that Shay Pierce had was that this was not possible to do before he had to sign the contract.