Lawsuit claims Google employees can't write novels about working in Silicon Valley without permission first

If you're an aspiring novelist at Google, you may need approval before putting pen to paper.

In a strange portion of Google's internal confidentiality policy found by The Information in an employee lawsuit against the company, employees are not allowed to write novels about working at a Silicon Valley tech company without Google's approval first.

Weird.

That's not the main complaint in the lawsuit, which was filed by an anonymous Google employee earlier this week, but it is one of several bizarre allegations about the company's policies designed to protect the company from leaks and legal threats. For example, the lawsuit says employees are supposed to report when they suspect colleagues are digging for information that could be leaked outside the company. Those kinds of policies are illegal, according to the lawsuit.

We've reached out to Google for comment.

You can read more about the case in The Information.