> your employer can claim 100% of your intellectual output
I've dealt with this:
1. When accepting a new job, I make a list of all the side projects I had and got a signature from the company that they were my projects.
2. When starting a new side project while employed, the first thing I'd did was write up a description and get a signed buyoff from the company that it was my project.
Never had a problem. The trick is to do this stuff up front and in advance, not after-the-fact.
I've had employment agreements handed to me by HR with "here, you'll just need to sign this, and we're ready to go!", and I've taken out my pen, drawn lines through the parts I did not agree to, sometimes adding my own words, signed it, and handed it back. The HR person might be a bit shocked (or not--I've seen both), but I always reassure them that I realize their lawyers will want to look at it, and if they have any concerns, I intend to cooperate with them in working out an agreement that satisfies them.
I have, for example, rejected claims on my work outside of the office done with my own time/equipment and not in my employer's industry. You don't need the government to say it for you. You can say it yourself as part of the contract.
So far, the lawyers have always approved my edits with no further discussion and without contacting me. They just tell HR they're fine with it, and that's that. It's fun when this surprises HR, but again, sometimes it is no surprise to them at all.
It hasn't happened to me yet, but I'm sure there will be cases where HR will get very upset, so you'll have to be gracious about it and reassure them that you fully intend to satisfy their lawyers. But you'd think that the lawyers would be the ones who got upset, but they don't. Lawyers do this with each other all the time: A writes up a contract, hands it to B, and tells him to sign it. "This is our agreement." B edits it, signs it, and says, "this is our actual agreement", followed by more back and forth. So if you propose a minor change to a contract that you had no part in writing, that's just ordinary business for a lawyer, and it's what they would be doing as a matter of course when hiring a senior executive.
In my experience, that approach doesn't always succeed when the company has tens of thousands of employees, all of whom have signed a contract with the same wording. You have to be willing to walk away and, even then, you may fail to reach agreement on the terms.
One of the other capstone projects my year was a large local company (600+ employees) that asked the students to design a system for keeping track of the differences between contracts for different employees. Not only was this a non-issue for them, they actively embraced it.
I've dealt with this:
1. When accepting a new job, I make a list of all the side projects I had and got a signature from the company that they were my projects.
2. When starting a new side project while employed, the first thing I'd did was write up a description and get a signed buyoff from the company that it was my project.
Never had a problem. The trick is to do this stuff up front and in advance, not after-the-fact.