

Ask HN: Legal/IP implications of freely offered coding? - dpnewman

I am a coder &amp; co-founder who has built an alpha web product over a year plus. The project is not yet incorporated but will be in coming months.<p>Another coder who loves the project is offering to help out part time without compensation in a &quot;just to get to know each other&quot; way. There is an understanding and verbal agreement this would be a free contribution with no offer of future work, and any&#x2F;all IP would all be 100% attributed to the project. (down the road if it makes sense to all involved, he&#x27;d like to be in position to be part of things)<p>I want to take him up on the offer, but am concerned that if we do not have a contract, from what I understand, he&#x27;s automatically assigned IP ownership as soon as he writes any code – and that would be too risky&#x2F;messy right now for the project regardless of verbal agreement.<p>What options do I have to take advantage of his gracious offer to help? Recommendations?
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centdev
I'm not a lawyer but I've seen agreements for something similar in which an
agreement was drawn up for the sum of $1 in exchange for freelancer service.
In these cases there was a monetary exchange for services and to not confuse
it for anything else.

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dpnewman
thanks - this is useful. i have heard of something similar as well wherein
even a small $ exchange is important to concretize the agreement.

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eximius
Get it in writing. E-mail, fax w/ signature, gpg signature, etc. Some kind of
verifiable writing should be sufficient.

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dpnewman
k ... good to hear.

