Intellectual property, especially in the field of technology is critical and having legal documents of ownership helps you with due diligence. The agreement needs to define key aspects like IP definition, release, assignment and third party infringement.
An IP transfer agreement is a legal document between individuals or companies transferring their Intellectual Property. This legal document is required when a company is incorporated or acquired as it clearly determines the ownership in such scenarios. Both the ‘Transferor’ and ‘Transferee’ sign the agreement.
What can be transferred using the IP transfer agreement?
Any form of Intellectual property – copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets and patents can be transferred using this agreement. It’s to be noted that this is a permanent transfer and is in favour of the transferee.
Potential pitfalls that can be avoided with a lawyer review
Since Intellectual properties are valuable assets of a company, it is necessary to make it fool proof and having it reviewed by a lawyer will help you with that. Some of the potential pitfalls of not reviewing include:
- Bad records of IP in document like naming errors, lack of proper titles, versions and updates
- Inability to get a lawsuit or a restraining order filed due to bad documentation
- Prior ownership conflict due to name change of the transferor after a long period of time
- Third-party infringement on IP
Apart from these, you may also want to add additional clauses specific to the Intellectual property.
CEO Law is a technology-enabled law firm that is challenging traditional law’s status quo. As part of our document generation solution, you can create customized legal documents (including a IP Transfer agreement) for a fraction of the price that it would typically cost a lawyer to draft them. A list of available documents can be found here.
