The rights of non-salaried founders on software developed for the company or creations designed for the company are never automatically transferred to the company.

The provisions in a partner/shareholders’ agreement are insufficient to ensure a proper transfer of these intellectual property rights to the company. Therefore, such rights remain the personal property of the non-salaried founders. This situation can become an issue, and is not satisfactory for potential investors.

The assignment contract available on this website has been prepared on the basis of the following assumptions:

• The founder is not and has never been a salaried employee of the company
• The founder initiated or took part in software developments or creations likely to be protected by copyright (graphic creations, texts, etc.)
• Any developments, software or creations being transferred must be detailed as much as possible in an appendix to the contract
• The assignment contract is based on the principle of a transfer to the company of the rights on developments and creations that will be carried out in the future by the founder for the company, however these transfers will need to be confirmed/repeated on a regular basis to precisely define, ex post, the works concerned by the transfer
• You must choose from the remuneration/compensation options set forth in the assignment contract

Click here to read our article on the transfer of intellectual property rights to the company

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The templates must be used with the appropriate precautions applicable to the use of pre-drafted documents, particularly considering that assumptions and choices were made when drafting these templates.

Although a certain number of brackets, comments and/or footnotes have been included to highlight these assumptions and choices, as well as their impact on the document, they cannot be construed as exhaustive and as covering all further amendments to be made to the document in the event certain clauses were to be modified.

Therefore please pay particular attention to the footnotes and specific comments when using this template.