I can appreciate your position, but I recently worked for a company that,
after spending many months on a project, failed to pay.  There were numerous
delivery options for the project, but when I asked for money after
completing 1/2 the project, I was "locked out" of the company, my personal
equipment seized, and the source code farmed out to another company.
  My suggestion is to give your customer the object (compiled) product, and
turn over source after payment.  On a hardware project, it is of course more
difficult, but for software, a simple encryption of the source would protect
small, independent developers.
  Of course, there were no signed agreements, and everything was friendly up
until I asked for payment.

Eric H.
-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Shaver <bobs@PMDINC.COM>
To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Date: Wednesday, March 04, 1998 4:26 PM
Subject: Re: [OT] Intellectual Property Ownership


>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
>