The employer does not own everything you do by law – only by the contract you may have signed. So, it is important to read the contract well and consider ‘work for hire’ clause before signing. If it is not critical to the company, it may ignore. However if the company is not willing to reconsider, then one can either look for another job (provided it is available) or negotiate in terms of compensation.
In the case of our heroes, it is necessary to see from the perspective of different stakeholders. The primary objective of players should be to perform well in cricket. At the same time they expect to be given autonomy to use their intellectual property and personal commercial rights freely. However, the BCCI and ICC want to make most out of its authority to control and monitor any activity relating to cricket. Therefore, it sees an opportunity to earn revenue from the endorsement done by different players.
It should be taken into consideration that the general people from whom both the cricket boards and players earn their revenue are interested in the good game of cricket. It cannot be achieved by making the players unhappy or a deadlock between players and ICC.
The purpose of the ICC and BCCI should be to ensure the players perform well in the games. Therefore, their place in the team and compensation should be linked to performance while the players should be left free to exercise their intellectual property and personal commercial rights. Because these rights appreciate in value only if the players perform well. So, in the interest of the game ICC should reconsider its contract.
In general cases the ability to pull off a better deal, without compromising on the professional interests depends upon the power exercised by the parties involved. Whoever is in the better control of the situation will have the greater bargaining power.
Taking the discussion away from the contracts of cricket players and the software industry, i would like to point out something interesting which i had come across a few days back. I was watching this program on some news channel which was exclusively dedicated to the innovations in rural places by farmers and other workers in small scale industries. On looking further, i got to know that there are thousands of innovations happening at the grass root level and i was able to find dedicated organization working to help these people out. The relationship between that and our current topic of discussion is that when people who are uneducated and at times illiterate, can come out with some fantastic innovations, when they are given the freedom to, just imagine the kind of innovations which the thousands of people, who are well educated and equipped with all the necessary skills can come up with.
ReplyDeleteAre copywright laws/patents/IPR's coming in the way ? Because the rural people may not even be aware of these things and they are able to come up with all kinds of innovations, as and when the need arises. Given below are some organizations which are dedicated to bring these innovation out in the open
http://www.rinovations.org/home_html
http://www.innovationsofindia.com/
One things which disturbed me is whether these organizations are truly working towards bringing these innovations out or hampering innovation by making these people aware of tools like copy wrights, patents etc.
This same philosophy can be extended to smaller organizations, where employees may not be bound as tightly, compared to those of large organizations which have set rules and standards for IPR policies. We see some of the best innovations coming up from these organizations. Does this trend have a correlation to the people in rural India who are not bound to anyone ? Looks pretty much like it does.
So, will it have a significant impact if larger organizations in India follow policies like the ones followed by Google and 3M, in giving the employees freedom to innovate without the fear of losing it to the company ? This is a question whose answer can be got only practically implementing it and with a significant portion of our IT workforce always on "Bench", I am sure they would get a lot of time to innovate, if they are given the freedom to, without the fear of the organization hijacking their ideas.