We can’t always own our words
Sandton - The law on an employee's rights to their ideas poses an interesting legal debacle as they cannot always claim their words as their own.
A Morningside resident who wished to remain anonymous has posed a legal question …
“If I, as an employee, give my company a business idea during a weekly business meeting and my idea ends up making the company millions, what rights do I have to this idea? I work as an engineer and constantly give my manager good ideas to impress him in the hopes that I will get a promotion but does the law protect me if I want to claim this idea as my own?”
This is a complex issue, as employees naturally want to express their ideas for the well-being of the company that they work for.
Many employees may wonder what rights they have to their ideas. These ideas may be verbal, given via e-mail or they could even be in the form of diagrams or drawings.
It is a pertinent legal question which relates to intellectual property. Attorney Tyrone Walker explained, “In most contracts of employment it states that any idea or intellectual property created whilst employed by the company will become the intellectual property of the company.”
What this means is that, regardless of who created it, ‘the company will still be the owner of it in most circumstances’.
After an employee discloses an effective and intelligent idea, the question of whether or not this employee is entitled to a promotion comes into play. “The issue of the promotion and hefty raise will then become an unfair labour practice matter and the employee can lodge an internal grievance with the company through its procedures or, alternatively, lodge an unfair labour practice dispute with the CCMA,” explained Walker.
This means an employee needs to think twice before disclosing their next ingenious idea because the second it leaves their lips, it no longer belongs to its inventor in terms of the law.
