Client 101: Protecting Your Intellectual Property Rights!
In this digital age where something new comes up in the internet every minute, written laws are having a hard time keeping up with the change. As more businesses hire freelancers or remote workers to do creative works like writing, designing, or developing applications – a question comes to mind: Who owns the rights to the work? Know that paying for a finished product doesn’t mean you own the rights to a finished product.
Intellectual Property Explained
Also known as IP, this term refers to property rights on intangible goods, or those which don’t have any physical form. This can include property rights to names, logos, inventions, and original creative works. Intellectual property rights protect the owner from having that idea or work reproduced by another person or a third party. If you have the next million-dollar idea, would you want someone to spread the word about it first – without your consent? IP laws are placed to prevent people from stealing someone’s creative works.
How to Protect Your Intellectual Property Rights when Working with a Freelancer?
1. Copyright
Certain rights are obtained with creative works and registration is fully recommended if you want to protect yourself from copyright infringement. Know that hiring a contractor to do works of authorship ( writing, design, software, films, videos, etc. ) means that the finished works are owned by them. For this, you need to have a written agreement that states who owns the rights to the work and the freelancer must agree that all works are made for hire. Unless a freelancer agrees to sign, you may not own the rights to the works he or she does.
2. Confidentiality Agreement
If your business has trade secrets you don’t want exposed to your competitors, have a confidentiality agreement signed by your freelancers. Most commonly known as a Non-Disclosure Agreement ( NDA ), this will help stop leakage of sensitive information or misuse of it by your remote workers. This is a must for all businesses with proprietary data.
3. Works Made for Hire
Signing a work-made-for-hire agreement means you are legally considered the author and owner of the works done by your freelancer. Take note that not all creative works fall under these categories: contribution to magazines, literary anthology, audiovisual work, translation, appendix, chart, bibliography, compilation, test, instructional or educational material, test answers, or atlas. If the work doesn’t fall under any of these, you need to have a written agreement which states that the freelancer will transfer all or some rights to you when the work is done.
4. Trademarks and Patents
A trademark protects misuse of your business name or logo by others. Trademark rights can last for as long as you use your name or image to do business. Patent, on the other hand, protects your inventions for a limited time frame so that others won’t be able to use or sell your idea. You can register with your local patent and trademark office for your name, image, and idea to be protected by law.
Bridging the gap between you and your freelance workers is a hard thing to do in the world wide web and it all comes down to trust and preparation. Intellectual property issues are the last thing you want to deal with as it can be very costly. An ounce of prevention won’t hurt anyone at all.
Intellectual Property
Something Interesting:
How Start-ups Should Protect Their Intellectual Property
How much does it really cost to protect your intellectual property rights?
