We protect
- Apps built outside work
- Software tools and games
- Open-source contributions
- Creative projects and small businesses
- Technical writing and independent research
- Public portfolios and personal credit
Worker innovation rights
Your employer should not own your weekends.
Right to Build protects the freedom to create, publish, sell, and be known for independent work made on your own time, with your own tools, without company secrets.
No trade secrets.
No company systems.
No paid work time.
No blanket ownership of a person's future ideas.
The problem
Why this matters
The next useful product might be trapped in an approval queue.
Builders notice problems. They make tools. They test ideas. They write code at night. They launch small apps, games, automations, plugins, workflows, and creative projects before anyone else sees the opportunity.
But many workers are told, directly or indirectly, that anything they build might belong to their employer, conflict with their employer, or require approval before it can be released.
Right to Build exists because workers should not need permission to create unrelated work outside the job.
What changes
We do not protect
- Trade-secret theft
- Use of confidential information
- Use of company code or private customer data
- Work built on paid company time
- Work assigned by the employer
- Misrepresenting yourself as speaking for the company
The principle
Companies deserve protection from theft. Workers deserve protection from overreach.
Right to Build is not anti-company. It is a practical line between paid work and personal creation: protect trade secrets, customer data, assigned work, and real conflicts, while ending vague policies that make permission the default for independent building.
Principles
Guardrails, not gag orders
A fair policy should be clear before someone builds.
Own your off-hours work
If you build it on your own time, with your own resources, without company secrets, the default should be that it is yours.
Define conflicts clearly
A company should not be able to veto independent work with vague claims about future markets or broad industry overlap.
No forced anonymity
Builders should not have to hide behind shell accounts, aliases, or unsigned work to avoid employer scrutiny.
Protect open source
Personal-time contributions should be allowed when they do not disclose confidential information or contribute employer-owned code.
Require a real appeal
If a company claims a conflict, it should explain the conflict in writing and give the worker a fair process to respond.
Stop retaliation
Workers should not be punished for building lawful independent projects that stay outside company time, systems, and secrets.
The Right
Model language
A right to personal building and publication.
A worker should be free to independently create, publish, distribute, sell, license, support, and publicly identify with personal work when that work is built outside assigned duties, outside paid working time, and without employer confidential information, trade secrets, private customer data, or company systems.
A broad reference to an employer's industry, market, anticipated business, or general area of interest should not be enough by itself to establish ownership or prohibit publication.
Research
Why the site has sources
The law is patchy, and that is the opening for the movement.
Some states already protect inventions created entirely on personal time without employer resources or trade secrets. Many still keep exceptions for work related to the employer's business, research, or assigned duties.
That patchwork is too narrow for modern software, where a large employer can plausibly claim interest in apps, AI tools, cloud services, health features, marketplaces, media, and developer tools.
Take action
Ask lawmakers to protect independent builders before useful work disappears.
Stay close
Help make personal building normal.
The movement needs builders, founders, employees, lawyers, investors, and company leaders willing to say that a job should not own a person's future ideas.