Things every client should understand about intellectual property agreements

Information technology services agreements

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

The main reasons intellectual property practitioners are commonly asked to draft information technology services agreements are twofold: (a) as stated above, not uncommonly, in the delivery of these services, valuable intellectual property rights 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; and (b) not uncommonly, as well, it is fairly common in these agreements for a broad array of technology – related services to be provided, according to a variety of mixed fee structures and widely varying terms and conditions, so that a practitioner who is skilled in addressing mixed questions of patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, and e-commerce law, across a broad array of technologies, is desired.