Create an IP Assignment with everyone who’s worked on your product or idea without a formal contract in place.
Make sure you have an IP assignment with everyone who has worked on your product or idea without a formal contract in place - this ensures your company owns their contribution, and not them.
When you first start building your business, there is often a lot of people working on your product and other intellectual property. These might be potential co-founders or team members, advisors, or even contractors that you hire (for example contractors for your website).
The IP that they create, even if it’s clearly for your business, doesn’t necessarily belong to you unless you have an IP assignment in place. There are many examples of founders not having their IP protected, causing an expensive dispute that can make you all but uninvestable.
An IP assignment ensures that any work they do for the benefit of your company, even if it was before your company was officially incorporated, belongs to your company. There is sometimes payment as part of this, which normally is either a nominal figure or what was initially agreed e.g. the contractor price for your website.
Ideally, you should make sure you have an IP assignment in place with everyone who has worked on your product, even if you don’t consider their contribution to be material to avoid any potential disputes in the future.
IP Assignment Clauses
An often-asked question in relation to IP Assignments is whether or not the Moral Rights clause can be removed and what it means if it is. The two main moral rights are 'attribution' (the right to be named as the author' and 'integrity' (the right to control certain changes in the work). So what does it mean if you remove the moral rights clause? Well, it means you'll have to assign authorship of the design to the agency and you'll need to be very careful when you make changes to the design. You will also need to be careful in which context you use the design. As such, it is recommended that you leave them in to avoid any potential disagreements.
Create, share and sign IP Assignments with each of your contributors easily on SeedLegals.
Step 1: Agreements > Click create IP Assignment
Step 2: Select New Recipient, enter in their details, and press confirm 
Step 3: Enter Terms of the Agreement > Select Done
Step 4: Sign & Share the Document 
To sign the document, press Sign and you will be able to use your signature to sign the document. To share the document, select the share document symbol and you will be able to share it to all the relevant parties.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel reach out to the chat bubble and we'd be more than glad to help!