With Two Small Lines in a Contract, Your Hard-Earned IP Can Be Washed Into the Company
- What the trick looks like: two small lines can wash your work into the company
“Employee work plus full rights transfer”: a common contract sentence says, “All achievements created by the employee during employment shall be deemed the company’s employee works or work for hire, and all copyrights and related rights, including transferable moral rights, shall belong to the company.” This labels all future output as “company product” in one cut.
“If necessary, transfer everything once again”: the second sentence usually follows, “If such achievements do not constitute work for hire, the employee hereby unconditionally and irrevocably transfers all existing and future intellectual property rights to the company.” This double insurance prevents any missed fish.
“Waive or do not exercise attribution rights”: a final strike adds, “The employee hereby waives and undertakes not to assert any attribution right, modification right, integrity right, and other moral rights.” You remain the author in the legal sense, but the contract agrees that you stay silent forever, and attribution space belongs to the company brand team.
- Legal breakdown: why these lines are so powerful
Article 18 of China’s Copyright Law: as long as conditions such as “mainly using the material and technical conditions of the organization” and “contractual agreement on ownership” are met, the company can legally take all property rights except attribution. Although attribution cannot be transferred, it can be agreed not to be exercised. In other words, you have the name in theory, but nowhere to put it.
Moral rights are not untouchable. The law says they cannot be transferred, but judicial practice recognizes “waiver of exercise.” The effect is close to “voluntarily staying silent.” Most employees who later try to defend their rights must first prove that the waiver clause violates public order and good morals. The litigation cost discourages 90% of people.
The same trick exists internationally. Anglo-American contracts directly write “waive all moral rights,” which is effective locally. When expanded to Chinese branches, as long as employees agree, it can land here too. Multinational legal teams combine the strictest versions across jurisdictions. If you later try to find a loophole, you can almost only rely on courts to provide reverse protection through precedent.
- Anti-harvesting guide: three things you can do before and after signing
Make an exclusion list. In an appendix, list works and ideas completed before employment or independently in progress, and mark them as “not employee works; rights reserved.” Without this paper, even your old self-media posts may later be treated as company assets.
Reserve exercise of attribution rights. Change “attribution of works shall be decided by the company” to “the company shall identify the author’s name or pen name in reasonable public contexts unless otherwise agreed in writing by both parties.” At least leave yourself literal existence in public materials.
For key clauses, choose one of two: either delete “waiver of attribution right exercise,” or require extra manuscript fees or equity as compensation. If the other party refuses, quantify the long-term value you are giving up and make HR write the budget clearly. Force them to put the cost of harvesting on the table.
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