[consulting] Contract protection clause

[nan wich]

First, our industry, or at least our part of it, needs to find better 
Intellectual Property (IP) clauses that we can use. Most of the IP clauses I see 
today are still written as though you were inventing or developing something 
tangible, such as a light bulb. These clauses are just not workable with FOSS.

I understand you client's desire. But how do you contract for trust?

As for "many of the same elements," bear in mind that copyright law, which is 
barely applicable here, requires only that 15% of the material be changed to 
establish it as a new work. What constitutes a change is up for grabs.

The most useful suggestion I can think of is to say you will not work for a list 
of identified (in the contract) competitors for a period of a year. Personally, 
I wouldn't do that anyway unless I requested permission from both companies.
 
Nancy
 
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -- Dr. Martin L. King, Jr.



________________________________

From: Bob Morse
We have a client who is concerned with protecting his new Drupal website we will 
be developing. He is asking for a clause in the contract that somehow states we 
will not turn around and sell his site with a new design slapped on top to a 
competitor. I'm not sure how to separate out, ahead of time, what would be very 
common elements and what would be unique based on the internal processes of a 
competing business. 


How might I write something that assures the client we won't resell the unique 
aspects of his web application without also writing something that prevents us 
from making a website for another company that uses many of the same elements 
but with the details being unique to that company's internal process and 
interactions with clients?
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