I was asked to sign one of these...
as part of on-boarding for a position. It had non-compete and "all your IP are belong to us" clauses. I asked the HR person about those clauses, and he said he'd get back to me. Couple weeks later (with repeated unanswered phone calls from me in the meantime), they told me the position was offered to someone else. I think HR had such a hard time getting somebody in Legal to answer my questions that it was easier to hire someone else.
During that time, I talked to someone who had been through a very similar non-compete. Upon very careful reading of the terms, it did prohibit, world-wide, for a year, working on any competing products. Being in pharmaceuticals, though, that's often not an issue - if the old employer made tablets, and the new one makes injectables, and they're for treating different diseases, then they're not competing products, so it's fine. The person I talked to was a lab worker; only one product at the entire (new employer) site was a competing product, so his manager simply didn't have him run the tests on that product for the first year. Problem solved.
As for signing away your IP, I talked with someone else who has a number of IPs in their own name, despite their employer having such a clause. Essentially it's unenforceable unless the IP has something to do with the employer's business or what they're having you do. So my two music albums would have been unaffected. (Not that I broke even on the albums anyway.)
That's in the US. YMMV.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
