Product Licensing

That was written by someone who'd never been married. Once Beyonce gets you to put a ring on it, the ball is in her court... actually, both of yours.

It sets the bar way too low. Never marry anyone who won't sign the prenup.

Which gets you right back to, "you need a lawyer."

One of my standard tropes in negotiations is "Could we put in (thing X, e.g. a liability cap) to prevent (bad thing Y, e.g. my firstborn child being taken by the fairies)? I certainly don't expect any such nonsense from you folks, but an acquisition can change things very fast." Nobody minds, because it's perfectly true.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I tell people "I write my contract as if you and I are honest guys who may be forced at any moment to sell out to an asshole".

The point is, entering a business relationship (potentially) gets you "highly involved" with the other party -- often in ways that you didn't expect (or desire). Much "cheaper" to do "dinner and a movie"!

Agreed. If you just want to see your designs produced "for the benefit of others", then retain the copyright (binary dump, schematic, etc.) but publish those documents in an "open" form. This allows *you* to continue work on the product/design, others to improve/enhance it *and* establishes your date of publication, etc.

E.g., the *last* thing that *I* want to do is get involved manufacturing things, dealing with "customers", etc. OTOH, I'd sure like to be able to *buy* many of the things that I've designed without having to do the initial fab, myself!

But I don't want to marry a guy :-)

Oops. Well, we are approaching past two decades now and it's still happily ever after.

For a marriage? Nah!

Ok, then a non-exclusive license would do the trick. Just curious, have you thought about how much you will charge? Or I did you say you wanted a royalty? A royalty can be complicated. A one time charge is much simpler, but if they sell a lot won't likely net you as much. Also, if you license a design without a patent and they change it in any way, I think they can claim it is no longer the same design. There can be a lot of tricks. If you get paid up front that eliminates the need for most of them.

Fair enough.

Mine is rather more concerned with making any contract watertight.

The problem is that in legal documents some common words have subtly different meanings that it takes a lawyer specialising in that field to explain. I can generally read all of the words in a legal contract but to interpret them correctly I need the assistance of a solicitor.

BTW If there is firmware involved and a security fuse on the device you can control the licensee by supplying preprogrammed devices. You may have to put sourcecode into escrow so that if you fall under a bus they are not left high and dry with an orderbook and no way to fullfil it.

But bear in mind that the security fuse is only going to cost them a couple of $k to overcome, if they are that sort of customer.

Perhaps it is easier to make sure that your support service is good value, then they don't have an incentive to rip you off.

Chris

You could disclose the secrets publicly.

Tim Wescott schreef op 06/18/2015 om 06:30 PM:

I'd outsource the PCB assembly & testing and deliver the PCB to the customer. The margin you want to make is in the price of the PCB you charge to your customer. That way you retain full control over the design and your margin. Your customer can take care of putting the PCB in a case and the sales & marketing. Just make sure your prices aren't grazy and they can't copy it quickly.

Any other way seems like a major headache to me. In similar situations I just let a project go if the legal stuff gets too complicated.

...and, that can be used to confuse a judge (who does not know spit then) and win the case by the oppositon.