I own a small 1-person technology-based consulting business in
California/ SF Bay Area. For the past few months, my clients have been
postponing their projects, resulting in zero income for me. Coming to
the point, I applied, inetrviewed for and am about to get a job offer
from a large company, which I will eagerly accept and start
contributing immediately.
So, here's my question: Is there I can do to prevent any future
conflicts with my (soon-to-be) employer, with reference to ideas,
concepts, prototypes, VC pitches etc that I have already generated.
While this seems to be intellectual property, I have not obtained any
provisional patents nor sought any legal help. My thinking is to get
some select drawings notarized to show that I had these ideas before
ever starting work at this company, which incidentally is not a former
client. I was wondering if services of an employment lawyer are needed
at this point. My employer will ask me to sign off on their standard
forms and I sure don't want to antagonize them in any way. Of course,
will shut down my web site and will not indulge in any conflicting
business.

In my experience, the employer's standard forms will include an
opportunity for you to disclose and protect your prior inventions from
being assigned to the company.  Of course, such a disclosure may
constitute publication and therefore start the one-year clock ticking
on patent filings.  You would need to consult with an
intellectual-property attorney to be certain.

Here is the language from one such agreement.  Something similar is
probably already in the employer's paperwork.  If not, I would not
think they would be adverse to add in such a provision to their forms.
 After all, it is as much for their protection as it is for yours.

"It is understood that all Inventions, if any, patented or unpatented,
that Employee made prior to his or her employment by the Company (the
"Prior Inventions") are excluded from the scope of this Agreement.  To
preclude any possible uncertainty, Employee has set forth on Exhibit C
attached hereto a complete list of all of his or her Prior Inventions,
including numbers of all patents and patent applications, and a brief
description of all unpatented inventions that are not the property of
a previous employer.  Employee represents and covenants that the list
is complete and that, if no items are on the list, Employee has no
Prior Inventions.  Employee agrees to notify the Company in writing
before Employee makes any disclosure or performs any work on behalf of
the Company that appears to threaten or conflict with proprietary
rights Employee claims in any Invention or idea.  In the event of
Employee's failure to give such notice, Employee agrees that Employee
will make no claim against the Company with respect to any such
Invention or idea."

Exhibit C is simply titled "List of Prior Inventions" and is a blank page.

The idea to seal an envelope and mail it to yourself is not a valid
way to protect yourself.  The observation that any work you do for the
employer that involves your ideas giving them ownership rights is
correct, absent a written agreement otherwise.

If the employer will not provide you with an appropriate form, then I
would get my provisional patent applications in before I started work
if at all possible.  Here are some other options available to you,
including having documents witnessed and the patent office's document
disclosure process: "The "Poor Man?s Patent" ? Aptly Named!"
http://members.cox.net/robertpbell/ARTICLES/POOR.HTM

Sincerely,

Wonko

The employment agreements I've seen in the tech industry all start by
assuming that the potential employee has no intellectual property of
his own. If this is not accurate, the employee is asked to declare his
intellectual property to the company.

I've never had to declare, so I'm not sure where the process goes from
there. I would suspect that the company's IP lawyers will go over your
declarations with a fine-toothed comb to make sure their IP doesn't
get 'polluted' with your IP.

You will have to change/add to the boilerplate that IP from date of
signing is theirs. The only IP of interest is that which could result
in money in your pocket so those areas could be described, sealed and
mailed to you should there be a dispute later - do not open and
confirm postmark is good.

You may find yourself using some of it in your work - if you do it is
theirs (golden rule - man with gold makes rules: I assume you don't
want to sue an employer) unless specificically excluded in
boilerplate.