Things every client should understand about intellectual property agreements

Engineering services agreements

The essence of an engineering services agreement is this: it is an agreement whereby one party (the Service Provider) agrees to provide engineering services to another party (the Customer), for a stated fee or other consideration, subject to certain terms and conditions.

As stated in general terms hereinabove, the reason intellectual property practitioners are commonly asked to draft engineering services agreements is that, not uncommonly, in the delivery of these services, valuable intellectual property rights (e.g., patent rights in newly created inventions) will be created, and a question arises as to which party will own these rights and whether or not the other party will have certain license rights in the intellectual properties created as well.