Research notes

Credibility matters if this is going to become law.

Right to Build should feel like a serious worker innovation rights movement: practical, sourced, pro-builder, and clear that trade secrets and assigned work stay protected.

Legal baseline

Mere employment is not the whole answer.

U.S. patent law has long treated inventors as the starting point for ownership. The Supreme Court's Stanford v. Roche decision explains that employment alone is not enough to automatically give an employer title to an employee's invention.

Contracts, invention-assignment agreements, confidentiality rules, conflict policies, and state-law carveouts can still shift the practical balance heavily toward employers. That gap between legal theory and workplace reality is the movement's lane.

Public example

When conflict language is broad, building becomes risky.

Apple's public Business Conduct Policy is a useful example because it directly addresses app creation, outside activities, confidential information, and employee rights. The point is not to make Right to Build anti-Apple. The point is that major-company policies can make independent software publication feel risky even for workers skilled enough to build useful things.

The stronger claim is simple: paid work belongs to the employer; independent work should belong to the person who built it unless a real, specific conflict exists.

State patchwork

Some states protect off-hours inventions, but the carveouts are large.

State	What exists now	Why Right to Build still matters
California	Labor Code section 2870 limits assignment of certain inventions built on personal time without employer resources or trade secrets.	Exceptions still cover work related to the employer's business or anticipated research and development.
Washington	RCW 49.44.140 has a similar personal-time and no-employer-resources framework.	"Employer business" and "anticipated research" can still become broad categories.
Minnesota	Minn. Stat. section 181.78 limits some invention-assignment terms and requires notice.	The same related-to-business and resulting-from-work exceptions matter.
New York	Labor Law section 203-f limits assignment of inventions developed entirely on personal time without employer resources or trade secrets.	Carveouts still leave uncertainty for modern software workers.
Illinois	The Employee Patent Act makes certain overbroad assignment provisions unenforceable.	Workers may still bear the burden of proving their project qualifies.
North Carolina	G.S. 66-57.1 protects certain employee inventions built on personal time without employer resources or trade secrets.	Like other states, it still contains important employer-facing exceptions.

Action tool

State alone is not enough to find every representative.

A state can identify U.S. senators and a governor. ZIP code can often narrow a House district, but ZIP codes can cross district lines. A full address is the best input for state house and state senate districts.

The first version of this site points people to official lookup tools and provides copyable scripts. A future version should use an address-based representative lookup with a clear privacy promise.

Donation structure

Advocacy needs clean structure.

501(c)(3)

Best for education, research, public reports, and worker resources. Lobbying must stay limited.

501(c)(4)

Better suited for legislative advocacy and lobbying campaigns. Donations generally are not tax deductible as charitable contributions.

Sources