Comment From the perspective of fudiciary responsibility (Score 2, Informative) 67
Not knowing anything about your company, I can only speculate on the reasons for having to sign this type of agreement. As for my own company, this comes in to play in several areas of the business.
1) Investors. When investors are doing their due dilligence on my company they want to make sure that the IP of the company stays with the company. So the question comes up, "Have all your employees signed [insert policy here]?"
2) Aquisition. Almost the same thing. If you are looking at a potential buy-out for the business, the company doing the aquiring wants to make sure that there are no sticky issues out there anywhere.
Those are the two biggies. The thing you need to realize from the business perspective (and that any good manager should communicate to you) is that exectives are held liable for fudiciary responsibility. What that means is, if I don't get an employee to sign that type of agreement, and some IP ends up in the wrong hands, investors have the right to sue on the basis that I have not upheld fudiciary responsibilities.
Hope that helps a little.
1) Investors. When investors are doing their due dilligence on my company they want to make sure that the IP of the company stays with the company. So the question comes up, "Have all your employees signed [insert policy here]?"
2) Aquisition. Almost the same thing. If you are looking at a potential buy-out for the business, the company doing the aquiring wants to make sure that there are no sticky issues out there anywhere.
Those are the two biggies. The thing you need to realize from the business perspective (and that any good manager should communicate to you) is that exectives are held liable for fudiciary responsibility. What that means is, if I don't get an employee to sign that type of agreement, and some IP ends up in the wrong hands, investors have the right to sue on the basis that I have not upheld fudiciary responsibilities.
Hope that helps a little.
