Hello Ananda, I am an academic leading a research project with several museum partners about presenting our archives online. This is a situation where all partners are contributing prior IP (archival content) but only the university is generating new IP (ways of presenting the content). An agreement of some kind is essential for all projects involving IP but depending on your circumstances it may not be necessary or practicable for the agreement to be joint. Our experience has been that some of our partners were happy to agree to a simple Memorandum of Understanding, some agreed in principle with the spirit of the document but required specific forms of wording and in one case the partner required a legally binding contract in two languages, which entailed enlisting the services of an international contract lawyer. This has had two consequences: 1. The process of formulating and signing each agreement has varied from a period of just a few weeks to up to 1 year depending on the complexity of negotiations and this had implications for the speed at which the project could progress. 2. Rather than hold up the entire project while a single joint agreement was sorted out to the satisfaction of our most demanding partners, we have set up a separate bilateral agreement with each partner, enabling us to progress with individual partners as soon as an agreement was in place with them. So what you put in place will probably depend on the value of the IP concerned, the way in which it being produced and how many partners this involves, and the needs of the partners in terms of specific forms of words and/or legal formats.
When it comes to working with creative tech companies, make sure that the contract states that you are paying them for their services and that any new IP they create therefore belongs to you/your consortium. You can afterwards choose to release it under a CC licence if you wish.
The museums copyright blog http://www.copyrightanswers.blogspot.co.uk/ is useful, although its not UK.
Regards Stephen
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From: Museums Computer Group [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Ananda Rutherford [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 22 January 2014 16:16
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MCG] Joint IP agreements
Hello All,
Apologies for the very pedestrian nature of the enquiry, but does anyone have any experience of drawing up a joint IP agreement between university and museum partners for a short research project about presenting our archives online? Indeed, do I want a joint agreement is there a better alternative?
Part of the project will also involve working with creative tech companies and our collections data - I am guessing that I will need another agreement here or would one of the CC licences work? I found stuff here http://www.ipo.gov.uk/, but then my brain began to hurt.
Any advice, examples, and suggestions of questions I should ask most welcome.
Thanks,
Ananda Rutherford
Assistant Keeper/Collections Manager
020 7749 6027 (Direct)
www.geffrye-museum.org.uk
https://twitter.com/geffrye
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