Thursday, September 06, 2012

The next person who...

..sends me a contract with text even remotely resembling this:

All I.P., including inventions, discoveries, creations, improvements, models, prototypes, patents, trade secrets, trademarks and copyrights relating to the  shall be the exclusive worldwide property of the Purchaser

is going to get a chopstick slammed up their nose. I swear to god.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Someone needs to learn about that rule where if you buy something patented you're allowed to sell it, so don't fret about the IP.

Can you offer some hints as to who is sending such crap?

US companies...or someone else.

Chaon said...

I have received essentially the same clause from three different companies in the last two months. All American companies, of course. What is more frustrating is receiving the same clause over and over from the SAME company in different contracts, master purchasing agreements, and confidentiality agreements, etc.. For nine years I have been crossing this section (along with others) out and sending it back to them. A year or two later, they'll send something new with all of the objectionable clauses included.

I am starting to take it as a personal insult. Some jokers are sitting around in their office under their big yellow and black logo, and one of them says: "Hey! Let's tell that tall asshole at that one company to go fuck himself". And everyone agrees, so they intentionally draft a document designed to give me an aneurysm.

Anonymous said...

Gotcha. Are they just hoping dumb Chinese companies sign their stuff away?

Chaon said...

That is exactly what they are hoping.

Anonymous said...

I'm not surprised since I once signed a contract with a Chinese company that specifically forbid the use of our designs in their own ads, etc. etc. and then, before our prototype was even finished, we saw photos of our designs in the guy's trade show flier.

When confronted and shown the contract he signed, which was written in *CHINESE*, the guy was shocked and dismayed.

We placed the order with a Taiwanese company that screwed us with far more decorum, using the traditional "when we agreed to the cost, our boss was too drunk to be thinking rationally" defense.

Chaon said...

Yep, I only use the "was too drunk to be thinking rationally" defense at home. Not in business.