Intellectual property assignment
is the transfer of rights in work product to the engaging company. Employment law helps employers only partly — many systems vest employee work automatically within limits (with invention-compensation regimes in Germany and elsewhere) — while contractor IP does not transfer without express assignment. The gaps surface at funding and sale.
Closing the classic gaps
Employee side: statutory vesting covers duties-related work, but inventions may trigger remuneration procedures (Germany’s Arbeitnehmererfindungsgesetz), moral rights persist in droit d’auteur systems, and software carve-outs differ — contracts should mirror local statute rather than assume US-style work-for-hire. Contractor side: absent written assignment, the contractor owns the code, designs and content you paid for; licences implied by conduct are narrow.
Cross-border programmes standardise: present-tense assignment language (‘hereby assigns’), future-work coverage where lawful, moral-rights waivers to the permitted extent, and per-country riders. Diligence in every financing round asks for exactly this chain — see independent contractor.
FAQ
Does paying for work transfer its IP?
No — payment buys the service; ownership follows law and contract. For contractors especially, no written assignment means no transfer in most systems. The invoice-only engagements of early-stage companies are the standard due-diligence wound; retrospective assignments fix them at a price.
Are employee inventions automatically the employer’s?
Within scope of duties, largely — but ‘automatically’ oversells it: Germany requires claiming procedures and compensation, other systems distinguish service inventions from free ones, and universities complicate further. In-scope vesting plus a compliant invention procedure is the defensible setup.