The CA Labor Code involves only "an invention that the employee developed entirely on his or her own time without using the employer's equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information." The article linked in the post is talking about an invention-for-hire doctrine that only covers inventions made within the scope of employment. So, I'm not sure how situations like the one covered by CA law are relevant. The point remains, it is not necessary to create such a doctrine, because employers, as a general rule, require employees to sign an assignment agreement that covers inventions made at work using work equipment.

Do you have a citation to a case that has invalidated a patent assignment clause? California likes to invalidate terms of employment contracts, but that's a stretch.

Fair enough, you can often negotiate what exactly fits within the assignment agreement, but what I meant was that the general idea---what you make while you work for us is ours---is basically non-negotiable.

Since this post is about U.S. patent law, I'm not quite sure how Europe is relevant.

Every single R&D employer requires employees to assign all inventions. There is no way that is negotiable. Your pay/commission/whatever for having to do so may be, but there's no way around this requirement in today's employment market.

Yeah, the court was ruling on several motions at once. The defendants' motion for summary judgment (which argued the use was fair) was granted, and the plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment was denied. That means the entire case is over at the trial court level. The standing part of the case was limited to a small subset of the issues.

Journals don't only publish papers reporting "positive results," whatever that may be. Even if your study comes out a way you didn't expect, if you did it right, you should still be able to get it published. There's something beyond publish or perish that is at work here.

It took a constitutional amendment to ban liquor, because the Supreme Court at the time did not interpret the Commerce Clause as expansively. After Wickard v. Fillmore, banning liquor or drugs would be perfectly within Congress' powers. The fact that Congress delegated some power to the DEA is perfectly in line with a number of precedents on agency powers.

It may or may not be entrapment, but it definitely doesn't prevent actual terror attacks.