technical marketing and intellectual property

Technical Marketing Collaboration & Intellectual Property Questions

As CAPLINQ grows our base of clients for our Tech­ni­cal Mar­ket­ing ser­vice, we con­tin­ue to get some good ques­tions regard­ing intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty of the mar­ket­ing materials.

Below are three recent ques­tions that I would like to address:

Q1. As the agree­ment cur­rent­ly stands if CAPLINQ were to cre­ate any IP (intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty) for us (a new client), why should we have to pay for, or allow CAPLINQ to use such prop­er­ty even after ter­mi­na­tion of the agree­ment? Is there a spe­cif­ic rea­son for this?
A1. Think specif­i­cal­ly of arti­facts that CAPLINQ would cre­ate: Datasheets, Pow­er­point and sales pre­sen­ta­tions, graph­ics and images. Much of this will be orig­i­nal con­tent cre­at­ed specif­i­cal­ly for the client, but much of it will also be drawn from our library of graph­ics and images that we have either bought, manip­u­lat­ed or cre­at­ed. These are in fact ours. We will use this to cre­ate orig­i­nal con­tent for the client, but to then pre­vent CAPLINQ from using our own cre­ations (slight­ly dif­fer­ent and cus­tom-made for oth­er clients) increas­es costs expo­nen­tial­ly. If clients insist on this point, we would have to adopt a dif­fer­ent (read much more expen­sive) pro­pos­al. So in fact, the rea­son we do this is to keep the costs down for both our­selves and our clients.

Q2. The draft as it stands allows for the cre­ation of new prod­ucts, logos, trade­marks and so forth by using all of part of the clien­t’s infor­ma­tion. Essen­tial­ly, this allows for the cre­ation of IP with or with­out the clien­t’s con­sent, claim it was for the client and then charge for it. In addi­tion, CAPLINQ can pro­duce new prod­ucts or trade­marks using the clien­t’s infor­ma­tion or prod­ucts, and after two years CAPLINQ can use it for free of charge.
A2. Of course if the client refers to logos, trade­marks and spe­cif­ic client prod­ucts, this con­tent would be cre­at­ed specif­i­cal­ly for the client, and would have no val­ue for CAPLINQ at the end of the agree­ment. The agree­ment cov­ers more broad arti­cles such as gener­ic back­grounds, lay­outs, con­tent, text, and essen­tial­ly all oth­er arti­cles that are not client-spe­cif­ic related.

Q3. The term “cre­at­ing IP for the client” is still a lit­tle broad. Legal coun­sel is ask­ing for spe­cif­ic exam­ples of what IP CAPLINQ believes should be paid for, or able to use for free?
A3. We agree, but this was done to pre­vent adding anoth­er 10-pages of legal paper­work. I think the answers above answer this ques­tion for you. Logo, trade­marks and client-prod­uct spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion will belong to the client, and CAPLINQ will not want or request any recourse to these. “Non-client spe­cif­ic arti­facts” such as those described above would either belong to CAPLINQ (and the client may use them free-of-charge), or would belong to the client (and CAPLINQ may use them free-of-charge). Either way the cus­tomer prefers is ok with us.

CAPLINQ strives to offer an afford­able tech­ni­cal mar­ket­ing ser­vice that is both fair for the clients and to CAPLINQ. We do this by cre­at­ing “Cre­ative Com­mons” types of licens­ing that offers both par­ties the rights to con­tin­ue to use the arti­facts that were cre­at­ing dur­ing the time of engagement. 

For more infor­ma­tion about CAPLINQ, our tech­ni­cal mar­ket­ing ser­vices, or our views on intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, please feel free to con­tact us directly.

About Chris Perabo

Chris is an energetic and enthusiastic engineer and entrepreneur. He is always interested in taking highly technical subjects and distilling these to their essence so that even the layman can understand. He loves to get into the technical details of an issue and then understand how it can be useful for specific customers and applications. Chris is currently the Director of Business Development at CAPLINQ.

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