Intellectual property rights and Obama's statement, "you didn't make that".  It's the same thing.  Taking an employees patent they came up outside of their work, or not having anything to do with their job, is stealing.  Just as Obama is trying to steal the hard work and credit that entrepreneurs have invoked in the successful building of their businesses.

  Soon after hearing Our Great Leader make the liberals faint from awe and shock with the statement that if you are a business owner that you didn't do that alone.  As rich for resentment as his statement is, I had started reflecting on how it fits with companies that have intellectual property waivers in their applications (or within the hiring process).

  I had hired into a corporation in the late 90's that was bought out by Sprint.  When they took over they handed out new laptops...with a condition, sign an intellectual property waiver.  A good portion of the technical analysts refused to sign the waiver, thus giving up the laptop bait.  It wasn't surprising even though I didn't know if anyone of them were inventors.  I had thought this waiver was about patents and inventions.  But it goes way deeper, into thoughts, ideas, methods, and CODING.  Programmers up in arms.  Snippets of code, scripts, routines and whole programs where at stake.  But actually there where many guys that weren't worried about what they created at work.  These waivers covered anything you came up with, on company time or not.  To think that Office Depot can take the patent from a cashier that creates a widget while off the clock, just because they needed a job and didn't know what that waiver was all about.  I know they have the waiver, I saw it on the job application, which I threw in the trash as I headed out the door.

  Truth be told, many fellow workers told me Texas law wouldn't hold up in Louisiana, and therefore the waiver was basically toilet paper.  I'm sure I didn't have enough money to fight Sprint in court to find out.  

So, my advice...Job seeker beware!