I have a friend who is a successful man and he’s produced a massive amount of material on a certain subject. He has done this for no other reason than it is his passion and what he feels is God’s calling on his life. His material came to the attention of a non-profit organization that wanted to bring him on board and give his material a wide and vast audience. A contract was signed.
This situation probably happens more often than we think. The question that came to my mind when I heard the story is… Did you give them your intellectual property (IP) rights? Why would I ask that?
Well, in a situation such as this, it is common for the author, my friend, to give up his rights in order to have the material obtain an audience. It may be even more common for nothing to be said or signed at all in regards to the IP rights of the material. The danger in signing away rights to material you produce is that the person, or in this case the organization, now owns them and owns how the material will be distributed. That includes controlling how, when, and why the original author uses the material.
The danger in not having the IP rights addressed is that both sides will think they own them and that could lead to some nasty legal battles down the line. Some might say this case is special because this is a non-profit organization and everyone should be willing to sacrifice for the greater good and no one in the organization should be able to get royalties for their IP. In this situation, I told my friend that protecting his IP doesn’t have to be about profit or royalties. He did not have to take royalties for his intellectual property to retain the rights. I encouraged him to make it clear in the future who owns the rights and to make it clear on paper.
If you have a passion and that passion produces something tangible, protect what you produce. You do not have to be in the mindset of making a buck to protect your IP.
