If a small business hires either independent contractors or another business to perform work for them, what steps should that business take to make sure that the completed product is legally owned by the business and not the entities or individual employed to create that product? Pointing me to resources on this topic would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
You definitely need an intellectual property agreement before the work commences. My understanding is that, in the absence of this, the contractor would own the rights to the work regardless of your payment for the work.
Whether or not that is true, it makes sense to have one to remove all doubt. Search using terms like “contract programmer intellectual property agreement” (even if the work/product you are talking about is not computer code, because this industry uses them a lot).
Get them sign a form saying that your business has claim, not the owk completed by contractors,
help with mine ? http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/ind…