Starting your own business as a freelancer can be exciting. However, while there are many benefits to establishing a business as a freelancer, you have to ensure that your rights are protected. There are many opportunities for your intellectual property rights to be infringed. Oftentimes, creating the correct business contracts and business agreements can help protect the ownership rights you have in your intellectual property. Understanding the ways you can protect those ownership rights can help you understand the types of contractual protections you need, and prevent your intellectual property from being stolen or misused from the start. An experienced business attorney in San Francisco can guide you through this process.

Intellectual Property Rights

The World Intellectual Property Organization states that intellectual property includes “creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works; designs; and symbols, names, and images used in commerce.” Most freelance business owners are concerned with trademark law and copyright law, as they are creating designs, software or other intellectual property that is of their own design and therefore inherently proprietary. If a freelance business owner is creating a new product, they would be concerned with patent law to protect their intellectual property.

Copyright Law

As soon as you make something, create something, or design something and put it in the stream of commerce, you have the right to the intellectual property behind it. Your legal rights are established under either copyright law, patent law, or trademark law. You have the full right, as an owner of your trademarked, patented or copyrighted work, to sell your intellectual property in any way you see fit. However, if you do sell your design, product or creation, you are also typically handing over the rights to ownership of that design, product or creation. If that is the intent of your business (such as a graphic designer creating logos for companies), then you should have a contract attorney help you create a contract that will guarantee that your clients will then own all the legal rights in that intellectual property.

However, if you never intend to provide the exclusive rights to the ownership of your work to a client, you will need to legally establish your rights through a contract that explicitly allows you to keep ownership of your intellectual property. For example, if you own a photography business, and will sell a license to one of your photos for limited use only on a specific brochure or marketing campaign, the company is not allowed to keep using that intellectual property over and over again. You have the right to determine how much and how often your creation or design is used by someone else.

Protection Through Contracts

Contract negotiation is important if you own a freelance business. For example, if one of your clients would like the actual copyright to your intellectual property, it must fall under one of the following categories: patents, copyrights, trademarks, plant variety rights, industrial design rights, trade dress, geographical indications, and some trade secrets. If your intellectual property does not fall under one of those categories, you still have rights. You can negotiate licensing rights with the company or client to use your intellectual property. Regardless of how you decide to market and sell your intellectual property, or if you are interested in trademark, patent, or copyright protections, having a business contract lawyer help you with the creation of your contracts is the most important first step in protecting your rights.