Most tech contracts in the US stipulate that the company owns any IP you produce under some conditions. You can use this to give your employer a weird IP portfolio. Personally, I'm looking forward to Google owning an extensive collection of "Welcome Back, Kotter" fan fiction.
"Oops, I used my work computer for this by 'accident', better put '© Google' on 'The Sweathogs meet Dracula'."
@pganssle that sounds like you are given a fair degree of flexibility, providing your output conceptually fits the banner of some product. The contract might get weird but above all you can act autonomously which is great
@binsrc I don't think my boss would appreciate it if I were to spend work time on Welcome Back, Kotter fan fiction, but the default contract in NY state has employers owning any IP related to what your company does, plus anything done with company resources, so if I do it on my own time but use the work computer or something, my company has a strong claim to own it.
@binsrc There's a good chance that if they don't want to be associated with it they'd either grant me the IP or say I can't release or publicize it.
I suspect they don't really want to exercise any rights like that on random weird fiction, though, so they'd probably either grant me the IP or some unlimited license to it. IANAL and I can't speak for Google, I just know people involved in OS at Google and they aren't really in the business of being petty (they're really very nice).
