Employment and contractor agreements
General
Some of the most important matters for a videogame studio is hiring and maintaining talent. The videogame industry is an industry with tremendous growth and there is sharp competition for talent. We have over the last 20+ year provided our legal services for our clients regarding hirings and terminations of personnel.
Employment Agreements
We do provide our clients with legal advice and recommendations of the best solutions and type of engagement of personnel, for example recommended types of employment etc. We do draft employment agreement tailormade for the videogame industry with intellectual property rights transfer, assignment and/or licensing terms to ensure that the client can use the intellectual property developed by its personnel in its products and services without any claims for compensation or restrictions beyond what is regulated by the employment agreements, applicable laws and/or collective bargaining agreements. Further, we have detailed confidentiality clauses in our employment agreement securing and clarifying the employees’ confidentiality obligations.
Contractor Agreements
Depending on the situation sometimes it is advisable that the client engages talent as independent contractors instead of employees. We thus advice the clients on the benefits of independent contractor agreements over employment agreement when suitable. We draft independent contractor agreements with terms and agreements to best protect the clients’ ownership or licensing rights to intellectual property created, confidentiality terms, non-competition terms, recommended law and venue, approval process, credit terms etc.
Specialized Contractor Agreements
A special type of independent contractor agreement is needed for securing the right to use music score and songs in videogames etc. due to international conventions like the Berne Convention, as well as applicable domestic copyright laws. Lawyer.se do provide our clients with unique and specific music rights agreements that protect their right to use ordered or purchased music for their products. During a negotiation with a major American videogame publisher regarding securing music rights for a videogame, the publisher called our music rights agreement “the best in the industry”.
