- If you have proprietary methods and materials,
you need to protect them.
Clearly specify in the contract who owns what
after the project.
Most contracts state that work you do on a consulting
engagement is work made for hire, in which case the client
owns all of it once the project is done.
Know how to keep your intellectual property from falling
victim to being taken because it's considered work product.
You can designate your methods as pre-existing content
and stipulate that you retain ownership
of it after the project.
An exception will be if you make work product that contains
the pre-existing content.
The client will want a royalty-free right to continue
using it as part of the work product you delivered.
Even if you retain ownership, beware of terms like
perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free rights to reuse
and redistribute your pre-existing content.
Some contracts are going to have that language in them.
We had one client where we were licensing
them one of our classes.
We said they could teach the class within a specific
division of the company.
When I got the contract, there were words like global,
perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free.
The client wanted the right, in the contract,
to redistribute our work anywhere in their company.
There was even a clause in there that they could take
our work and sell it to third parties.
Obviously, we had that language removed from the contract
before we gave them the rights to our intellectual property.
Involve a lawyer in this process who understands
intellectual property rights.
Have them help you protect yours.
One of the biggest assets you're going to have
in running a consulting firm are your thoughts and ideas.
The more rigorous you are about protecting them,
the longer you're going to be able to generate
economic value from them.