IP and open source
Who owns the code, what you may reuse, and what you must publish.
We make sure the company owns what it builds, with a signed from everyone who contributed, and we help you understand the in your product.
We read licences for what they require of you, not for what they look like.
Questions we are often asked
- Do contractors own what they wrote for us?
- Can we ship a product that uses a copyleft library?
- Should we register a trademark now?
How we usually work
- An inventory of what exists and who made it.
- Assignments and licence policy in plain language.
- A short guide for the engineering team.
What we do not do here
We do not run patent prosecution or carry out technical code audits.
Terms on this page
- IP assignment. A signed document that moves ownership of what someone created to the company.
- Open-source licence. The conditions under which anyone may use, change and share a piece of code. Some only ask for credit; others require you to share your own code if you distribute the combination.
Who works on this
To read
In many places the person who writes it owns it until a document says otherwise.