Engaging service providers without any terms (or with inadequate terms) can, and often does, have disastrous consequences for a venture.
Risks include a failure to secure valuable IP, dilution of IP, crippling limitations in terms of the venture’s future activities, unacceptable exposure to risks and liabilities, a lack of control over the activities of the service provider, limited recourse for poor quality, and other risks which serve to scare away potentially valuable future partners and investors.
The situation here is critical if you haven’t signed any documents that address the relevant issues.
Even if you have signed something, in our experience most documents (even sometimes those prepared by a venture’s lawyers, and especially those sourced online) do not adequately address the issues here. The risk is even more critical when you have accepted terms prepared by lawyers who acted for the other side (for example, when you accept a service provider’s standard terms).
We can have a quick look at documents you’ve signed (or terms you’ve accepted without signing) in the past and let you know if they look like they’re exposing you to serious risks. We can do this at no cost to you, so don’t hesitate to get in touch.
We have experience acting for leading innovative organisations, and have developed a premium quality services engagement agreement to help you manage these issues. The quality of the document will impress upon future investors that the management team is on the ball when it comes to addressing critical issues and sourcing premium quality advice and documents.
We are happy to provide our document at a fixed cost, in finalised form (not in draft form seeking further instructions). The document will be tailored to the specific circumstances of your venture.
Our document comes at a fraction of the cost of seeking to un-do the damage that may otherwise be caused if you proceeded without the protections in the document. And remember, sometimes it may not even be possible to un-do such damage, so getting these issues right from the outset is the best (and cheapest) way to proceed.
Ideally, our services engagement agreement is designed to be used before you engage anyone (including designers, developers and prototypers) to help you in any way with your venture. If you’ve already engaged service providers without an appropriate engagement document then, in addition to potentially needing our services engagement agreement, you may also need our IP Assignment document.
In all cases, the earlier you lock in a quality engagement agreement, the better.
Please email us at engagement@saljar.com or call us on 1300 882 643 to discuss whether our specifically developed services engagement agreement is right for you, or if you’d like us to have a quick look – at no cost to you – at existing terms you’ve accepted. We’re happy to discuss all these issues at no cost to you, so don’t hesitate to get in touch.