Employee IP agreements get an open source rewrite

GitHub has released version 2.0 of its Balanced Employee Intellectual Property Agreement (BEIPA), the template it first published in 2017 to give employees clearer ownership rights over code they write outside of work. The new version borrows a concept directly from open source licensing: instead of forcing exclusivity onto creative work, some IP is now shared between employer and employee.

The motivation is data. A Linux Foundation/Harvard study found that just 45% of developers believe their employer's policy lets them contribute to open source in their spare time without permission, up from 35% a decade ago. Another 30% know they can contribute but only after getting approval, up from 25% previously. GitHub's own 2017 Open Source Survey reported similar numbers. Although the trend is positive, the company argues there's still too much ambiguity in standard employment agreements.

BEIPA 2.0 targets the gray zone: IP an employee creates outside their job duties but still related to the employer's business. Under most agreements, including BEIPA 1.0, one party or the other retains exclusive ownership. The updated contract takes a different path—the employee owns the work, and the employer receives an unlimited, non-exclusive license to it. The structure mirrors how open source licenses grant usage rights to anyone rather than fencing code off. For creative work where free access matters more than exclusivity, both sides get what they need.

What changed from 1.0

Beyond the non-exclusive licensing model, BEIPA 2.0 includes several targeted revisions, many driven by community pull requests:

  • Confidentiality obligations removed. Employee confidentiality duties are typically already covered by corporate policy, so they no longer clutter the IP agreement itself.
  • New third-party NDA clause. Employees now agree not to share information protected by someone else's nondisclosure agreements or IP rights. The clause shields both the individual and the company from prior commitments that could create conflict.
  • U.S. state law annex dropped. The appendix detailing specific state statutes was removed to make the document more jurisdiction-neutral. It now lives in a separate reference document and is explicitly not legal advice.
  • Survivorship clause added. If a court strikes down specific terms, the rest of the agreement remains enforceable.
  • International adaptability. The template was revised to be easier to adapt for non-U.S. jurisdictions, starting with Germany.
  • Streamlined language. Unnecessary legalese was cut from the document.

BEIPA 2.0 is available on GitHub under the same open source model as its predecessor. The repository remains open to comments and pull requests, and GitHub is specifically soliciting feedback from teams that have already adapted the earlier version for their own use.