answer:Of course they can. They’re your employer. They can give you any tasks even vaguely related to your job they want. Of course, if you choose not to, the worst they can do is fire you. As for “signing away intelectual capital that <you> have”, you DON’T have any intellectual capital. Legally, everything you learned and worked on while employed by that company is THEIR intellectual property, not yours. And if you were to try to take that knowledge anywhere else in an attempt to harm the company, they would likely sue you, and win. Again, your options are to do the job they give you, quit, or get fired.