Before collaborating on a project that could create valuable business assets, agree who will own any resulting intellectual property (IP), how it can be used and how you will protect confidential information.
IP can be created when you collaborate to design a logo, develop software, improve processes, develop a marketing campaign or develop a product.
Before you start collaborating with another party, agree in writing how you will deal with IP issues. Agree how you will manage:
Paying someone to do work for you does not mean you automatically own the rights to whatever they create under that agreement.
IP can be created when someone works for your business under a:
Check if your contracts have a clause dealing with IP ownership.
If intellectual property is an important asset to your business, make sure that your supplier and employment contracts routinely include an IP clause explaining who will own any IP created or used as part of the contracted activity, and how the IP can be used.
Collaborating with others often means sharing ideas, technical specifications and sensitive business information. Strike a balance between sharing enough information to achieve your collaboration objectives without losing any commercial advantage.
If you need to share commercially sensitive information, consider how you could protect this. You could use:
Confidentiality agreements can help to protect information, but they are not a substitute for secure storage and sensible access controls.
