Asset Ownership Document?

#1 What you need is a licensing agreement. Boilerplate versions can be bought cheaply at most business supply stores. As low as 50 cents. Just change to suit your needs.

#2 www.ilrg.com/forms/

I included some boilerplate from this site into my own agreement, although like most non-lawyers I think the contact I eventually drafted was paranoid and baroque and would be difficult to enforce.

Maybe www.ilrg.com/forms/genassgn.html? Especially:

Quote:
the rights and benefits assigned hereunder are free and clear of any lien, encumbrance, adverse claim or interest by any third party

Which is probably the most important clause. I'm less worried about agreements between lightweight principals than getting blindsided by some heavyweight third party. Always consider heavyweight third parties when drafting agreements to make sure that you don't get enjoined in a suit. I always make it clear that any provider must be certain that anything they provide is unencumbered

I guess this is legalistic sounding enough that I need to add the standard disclaimer that I'm not a lawyer and that this is lay advice provided by a peer and not legal counsel.

One thing I also add is a reversion clause, something to the effect that if a retail product including the contributions of the other party is not offered for general sale to the public by , that all rights revert to the original author. This makes some people who have been burned by other projects less gun shy about contributing assets to Yet Another High Risk Indie Project.

#3 I already have the contributers, and there's already a verbal agreement in place... so I'm mainly in the crossing t's and dotting i's stage here. I'm going to have to go to an office supply store today to return something, so I'll see what they might have, and I'll take a look at your form, Brad.

Thanks LOADS. While I'm an old hand at game development, I'm a babe in the woods when it comes to business management / administration / legal gamboo. I'm just hoping to avoid the worst minefields.

#4

Quote:
I'll take a look at your form, Brad.

Those aren't mine, they are just a collection of boilerplate I googled when I was drafting my own agreement. I did cut and paste some of those boilerplates into my own agreement.

I was pretty tired when I wrote that post, so it wasn't as lucid as it could have been.

#5 No problem, Brad. I realized that once I had a chance to look at it. No worries. The nearby OfficeMax had plenty of legal forms, but nothing that was quite appropriate. But this is a good starting place. Thanks for the link!