Invention licence agreement

About this licence agreement

You may be an individual or represent a company. You have devised and produced an invention or technological innovation. It may be applicable in one industry or many. It could be anything. You want to license it to a major manufacturer in a particular industry. You probably intend to grant more licences in other industries or to manufacture it for your own use in your industry.

Your product or device or invention relies to some extent on a support system, no matter large or small, which requires slightly different licence terms because it may be used by others. You will upgrade it from time to time.

This agreement covers your intellectual property rights in every aspect of your work: design drawings, copyright, software, patents and more. It provides for a single payment up front with the option of a royalty too. The licence lasts for ever and is therefore irrevocable - so that your licensee can be sure that it and its customers are safe in buying from him. It is limited to a particular market. There are no re-sale or sub-licence rights.

The agreement provides options for support - or none. It is also assumed that the licensee will require a licence to use your support systems, in common with licensees in other industries. You do have continuing control over that licence. It is therefore more limited.

There are two reasons why you might wish to protect this additional material more strongly:

• First, it may have far wider application and you will wish to use it in the same market for other applications, or in other products and other markets;
• The second reason is that you may not own all the supporting material. You may yourself use some IP which has been licensed to you from others. The best he can do with that IP is to make sure you are allowed to sub-license it, then do just that.

You choose the exact deal you want in this agreement. You are always in control. You can choose the period the deal is to run, the type of merchandising, countries for selling, quality of goods and more. Each of these is the subject of a separate sub paragraph, for easy edit by you. You can choose “in” or “out” or edit.

This agreement provides the complete legal framework for what may appear to be a complicated deal. The Net Lawman modular structure in plain English takes you smoothly through the detail of a document of 6,000 words.

Key features

• Professionally drawn, tough law
• Easy to edit (as always with Net Lawman documents)
• Thorough coverage of legal areas
• Practical, alternative business provisions
• No requirement for you to be your own lawyer

Alternatives to this licence agreement

Net Lawman offers around 20 licence agreements and assignments relating to intellectual property in addition to those in website terms and conditions.

You can find the full selection at:

• Basic contracts for creative work
• High level IP licence and sale agreements
• Merchandising agreements
• Assignment, sale and transfer
• IP licences by creator or owner
• Software and other development contracts

Contents of this licence agreement

It is impossible to explain a six thousand word document in a few lines, but here is a list of the major subjects covered:

• Definitions and interpretation
• Warranties and understandings
• The Licence deal
• Licence of supporting IP
• Use of third party IP
• Protection of licensed material
• Royalty calculation
• Third party infringement
• Continuing research, improvement and product updates
• New intellectual property and derived products
• Confidentiality
• Indemnities
• Other matters relating to enforcement and other legal issues