Contractual Allocation of Intellectual Property Ownership
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius lawyers, writing in the firm’s Tech & Sourcing blog, discuss the typical ways that parties can use contracts to determine intellectual property ownership.
“In the context of negotiating an agreement where intellectual property rights are addressed, most parties will readily agree that those intellectual property rights owned by a party before the effective date of the agreement or developed outside of the agreement (commonly referred to as background rights) should be owned by that party,” write Vito Petretti and Cindy L. Dole.
Their article discusses the common allocations of foreground IP rights.