My employer technically owns anything I create. Even outside working hours. They have even won cases where an employee patented an idea after leaving the company. The court granted the company the patent. Talk about screwed up. Obviously I'm not in CA but am in the US.
We did have several people leave before joining because they refused to sign the agreement. I know that it's my fault I signed the agreement. I'm also working towards your suggestion (38 applications so far this year) but the thing that scared me was the fact that they got ownership of something after the employee left. I can see if it was something they worked on while with the company and then left and tried to patent it. If it was something completely unrelated then I just lost faith in the legal system. I'm also probably risking being fired just by posting something like this, shrugs.
It's kind of a grey area. The court docs show that they have won. I don't know if they were directly related to the persons daily responsibilities. I think there was some wording about any thing that competes with the company but the company is in basically every market. Honestly, I just weigh the risk of weather or not I think they would actually even care about what I'm working on. I know we have people who make mobile games on the side and no one really cares.
If I'm not directly competing and stealing clients I think that chances are low that they will try to claim ownership.
