[Phpwm] Intellectual Property Agreements

[Bronwen Reid]

Zeth Green wrote:
> On 21/09/2007, Bronwen Reid <info at bronwenreid.com> wrote:
>   
>> One of my clients has asked me to provide a letter assigning them all
>> ownership of the work I've done for them.
>>     
>
> Have they paid you already?
>   
Paid, and paid again.  They are a very good client and I've had a lot of 
work from them.
They're now making heavy use of the web application I built and use it 
to manage a lot of their day-to-day business.
But because it's becoming integral to their business, they've started to 
ask about ownership and worry about whether I can take it away from 
them, sell it to a competitor, start charging them a massive licence fee 
or just do something brutal with lawyers at point-blank range.

I sympathise, I completely understand where they're coming from but I do 
not want to sign anything which hands over all rights to everything forever.

And yes, of course we should have both thought of this right at the 
start.  (But at the start I was offered a day's work fixing someone 
else's perl code!)

I think it's time to find a solicitor.

  Bronwen