Intellectual property assignment
The clause that transfers ownership of what was created from the person who made it to the person who paid for it.
An intellectual property assignment is the term that moves ownership of created work — designs, code, copy, photographs — from whoever made it to whoever commissioned it. The point worth knowing is that paying for work does not automatically make you its owner in many places. Ownership commonly starts with the creator and moves only if something written moves it.
That single fact produces two mirror-image problems. As the buyer, you can pay in full for a logo and hold no right to register it as a mark. As the seller, you can sign a broad assignment that hands over not just the delivered work but the reusable components underneath it — the templates and libraries you built over years and intended to use again next month.
The practical shape most working agreements settle on is narrow and explicit: the client owns the specific deliverable, ownership transfers on final payment rather than on delivery, and your own pre-existing tools stay yours with a licence to use them in the delivered work. Say all three, because the silence on any one of them is resolved by a default rule you did not choose.
This is the clause where a bad template is genuinely expensive, and the rules differ substantially by country. Have yours reviewed by a qualified professional where you work.
Also known as
- IP assignment
- rights transfer
- work for hire
Relevant for
- Creators
- Read what a broad assignment sweeps up — the templates and presets you built over years are underneath the delivered file, and they are not meant to be in the sale.
- Business owners
- Tie transfer to final payment, not to delivery; it is the only leverage in the agreement that survives an invoice going unpaid.