Should I quit my job over intellectual property rules?

The question of what employers usually claim can be found recently on HN - you may find the discussions either here on on the linked articles interesting:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2208056

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2209181

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2209905

As to the question of what you "should" do, that's different, and up to you. What you "should" do is talk to your manager and say that you're not happy with outside work being verboten even when it doesn't prevent you from doing your "real job," and doesn't compete in the same space.

Make it clear that you understand their position, but try to get some acknowledgement of yours. You want to engage in these outside projects because you ened to keep your skills up-to-date and progressing. You don't want to be worried in case one of the side-projects takes off and makes money.

Start a dialog, and ask yourself how you feel about it.

Personally I would just ignore it. If your company owns what you do on their time and off their time that would mean you're a slave. Since slavery is almost certainly illegal where you live, I'd say you're pretty safe.

They might be able to give you some grief if you're doing the exact same thing at home as you're doing at work, but even then I doubt they could enforce anything. Didn't Zuckerberg sign some agreements about copying not copying work?

Of course, if they hear about your commercial project(s) they could fire you for it, but if they'll fire you for something like that they were probably looking for a reason anyway.

From what I've seen, this is common, and to an extent, understandable too: a company does not want its employees to use the knowledge they gained at work in (profitable) side-projects.

Your best bet is to talk with the company and get a written exception, like they gave for open source.

Though, chances are, if both the company and your side-project is in the web development business, they won't make an exception, since the side-project can be seen as a competing product.

Ethics dictates that if the side project you are working on may be in competition with your company's products, then it would be a lot wiser to pack up and leave and pursue it. Otherwise, I don't see anything wrong with having side projects, especially if it is something you are passionate about and would add better to your bottom line.

I quit my last position after a former coworker got sued by my employer for creating a very popular and profitable online game. The situation put a chill over all the whole company. And eventually I decided I couldn't continue to work for them with the constant threat of being sued should I ever leave and be successful on my own.

Software developers really need to be educated so they are not tricked into signing legal traps like this - I wish I had been. I'm not sure why invention clauses are even legal in the first place, but all it takes to avoid a nasty situation is to read the papers before you sign and refuse to sign it.

Depends where you live. If you're in California, ignore it. State law protects you pretty well.