Well, you can *try* to retain all rights to whatever you build.  What ever
is in the contract between you and your customer is "the law". However, in
practice most companies won't sign that kind of agreement.  Most
importantly, don't try (or appear to try) to swindle your customers.  My
company provides design (h/w & s/w) for other people.  Our development
contracts fall into three categories:

1) Almost all of our development contracts pass non-exclusive rights of
ownership to the customer.  This
means that they own a copy and can do whatever they want with it, and we
retain the right to use/modify the design for our future purposes.

2) Some companies insist on exclusive rights, and we charge them more for
this privilege.

3) Sometimes we propose that we "fund" the development ourselves and sell
it as an "off-the-shelf" item to the customer.  We do this when we see an
opportunity to sell the product to other customers, or in volume to the
original customer (of course we don't say that to the original customer).
 We usually give the original customer a small price break (incentive) for
this option).

Most of our work is building prototypes for others, so most of our
contracts (90%) are the first type.  About 5% are the second type, and the
remaining 5% the third.

On Wednesday, March 04, 1998 10:15 AM, Peter Casavant
[SMTP:pcasavan@US.IBM.COM] wrote:
> I am IBM employee who is leaving IBM to start my own design service
company. I
> am uncertain what rights I should be retaining, and what rights I can
give my
> customers ownership of. Is there anyone out there that can advise me in
this
> area?
>
>  Thanks,
>
>  Pete Casavant