Hi folks! A charity I am volunteering for as an illustrator asked me to sign an assignment of IP. Is the paragraph below legal?
'For the avoidance of doubt the Assignor may not disclose any information pursuant to this agreement including descriptions, images or representations in their portfolio, website or in the public domain without written consent from the Assignee. All information shared with the Assignor will remain confidential and will not be shared with any third parties.'
Context: I am volunteering to get some experience and be able to show the illustrations I am doing for them, for free, on my portfolio and on my website (not on social media), without having to ask them.
Can they really sue me for this?
Many thanks :)
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Replies9
- @Denis Robinson
- It’s called a NDA (non-disclosure agreement), very standard chairty or not. Always have to ask share any work your doing, sometimes the work maybe part of a campaign thats on going, campaign coming from an external creative agency (agreement between the chairty and company it maybe working with).Example if your sharing work that is part of pitching concept and the chairty doesn’t like it, and you share it means your sharing someone elses/another agency/studio concept/idea which could lead the chairty having to pay a release fee or fine.If you do plan to show it do so when the NDA expries and can feature in your personal portfolio as long as it is password protected.
- @Dominic Livingston very very true!
- Not a lawyer but I'm sorting out IP for my own apps right now. There appears to be a clash here. Anything you produce is your own copyright by default, unless your contract signs it over to the person you are working for. IP is there to prevent you sharing their work/ideas/branding/invention with third parties. This, however, looks like they are treating your work as their own IP, which seems to me to be a paradox. I think the question for someone who has more competence in these matters would be less "is this legal?" than "is this legally coherent?"
- My advice: Don’t volunteer - if they’re not compensating you for your contribution.They shouldn’t be able to prevent you from using the work you do as a way to leverage future work.
- I would get them to amend the contract personally. A contract should be beneficial to both parties.
- Hi Agathe,As you're doing it to get experience and also to use the illustrations to help promote yourself then I would suggest going back to them and say just that. Don't sign anything until you are completely happy with the terms and feel free to ask them for as many changes as you need to be comfortable, after all, you're the one doing them a favour by working for free! If they refuse then don't sign. :)Hope that helps a little, don't get spooked by contracts, stand your ground :)Steve
- Hi Agathe,As far as I am aware, the illustrator by law retains all rights to their work unless they explicitly sign the rights over to another party (although usually exclusive lifetime rights incur a large fee). You also retain the right to use the work for your own self promotion - the AOI has some great free resources to navigate this: https://theaoi.com/resources/copyright/the-importance-of-copyright-when-you-are-commissioning/In my personal opinion the paragraph you quoted is very unusual - particularly for a volunteer position - and I wouldn't sign the rights to my work over, especially if I was doing it for free for portfolio experience!Hope that helps!Best,Freddie
- Hey! We can try to discuss this over private messages if you want, I could help you :)
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