Protecting the Designer

Blog 7: Protecting the Designer

Work-for-hire is where a contract is in place stating the relationship between the designer and the client before the design is created, and where it is created in the course of employment.  In this work-for-hire situation, the copyright belongs to the company, not the designer.  In order for this to be the case, the phrase “work-for-hire” or works made for hire must be included in the contract and the contract must be signed before work begins.

If a work-for-hire arrangement is not in place before work begins, if a client wants to retain all rights, the only way to transfer ownership to the client is by assignment.  This transfers authorship rights that will last 35 years.

Nondisclosure agreement means that a designer agrees not to disclose any information received during the course of work.  These agreements can be explicit and clearly state what information or areas the designer is restricted from disclosing.  Noncompete agreements state that an employee is restricted from working for a direct competitor.  These contracts or agreements are not clearly enforceable.  Because you cannot deny someone the right to earn a living.  But, all design firms could be competitors.  So these noncompete suits are usually only filed when there is a clear violation or a competitor has a clear advantage by hiring someone.

An example of a nondisclosure violation would be if a designer did work for a certain company and then did work for a competing company and gave people from the second company some sensitive information received while working with the first company.  For instance, processes used in the creation of a product, or a certain design method or other insider information.

An example of a noncompete agreement violation would be if a person worked at a foodservice company and then went to work for a competing foodservice distributor and used the customer list and price list from the first company to sway customers over to the new (2^nd) company.  This would be using information received at the first company to benefit a competitor, so it could actually be considered an example of nondisclosure and noncompete violation.