Mopsos has written an interesting piece on knowledge management (via blogging) in the corporate world, Blogging to become a legal obligation? In it he describes a conversation with a lawyer who suggested that all of an employee's knowledge belongs to the company. While that seems rather extreme, it has some interesting implications.
On a practical note, this [discussion] has quite simple implications. Let's ask ourselves what happens when an employee leaves a company to develop his ideas in another one. Well, if it is proven that he withheld information from his former employer to do that, he should be sued. But if he had this great idea and shared it in the company, but nobody cared (happens all the time!), is there a good reason why he shouldn't be allowed to leave and maybe start a company with this idea?
In the end, it might well be that the best interest for both parties is to have every employee keep written logs - one per community - of everything they do. The employee can then use the blog records to prove that he did not withhold information from the company. If he cannot, well, too bad for him.
Scary implication, but an interesting proposal. Mopsos has also followed this post with additional thinking on the implications of this and some other good stuff about knowledge management in general.