Client Testimonials
"Dealing with the Waterfront Partnership has been a very easy process from the start. The team are extremely professional, knowledgeable and friendly. We are a start-up technology company with no experience when it comes to legal matters, so it could have been a minefield. However, Carole, Trixie and co explained everything in layman's terms and made me feel very comfortable knowing the fact that my business was now in good hands.
The quality of their work, the understanding of our requirements and technology and the speed in which they produced our documentation were all first class. I feel we have a great relationship with The Waterfront Partnership and now I wouldn't consider using anyone else."
Phil Reed, Director, FinQS
Intellectual Property Rights
Intellectual property rights - copyright, patents, trademarks etc - are relevant in the context of technology contracts for two main reasons. It is your ownership of intellectual property rights in your technology that allow you to protect the technology as an asset and exploit it for commercial value. There are various ways of asserting your ownership of the technology as an asset and as the owner of an intellectual property right you may, for example, licence, rent, assign, sell and develop the right.
As well as exploiting your intellectual property rights, your contracts should ensure that you limit the risk of infringing someone else's intellectual property. For example, contracts should not assert that you own software if the copyright is actually owned, in whole or part, by a third party since if you make a statement that is not factually correct, your customer may be able to claim damages for misrepresentation and breach of contract.
Moreover, technology companies tend to give general indemnity clauses to their customers in respect of infringement of third party patents. You should not contractually represent that you do not infringe patents anywhere other than in the UK since you cannot know that what you are stating in the contract is correct.