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How to Spell Out Ownership Terms
When you are a freelancer, it's important to spell out ownership terms in your contracts. Depending on what sort of work you do, you may have to include this information in your contracts to protect yourself and your work. For example, if you're a writer, and you are selling an article to a client that is only to be used on his website, you will need to specifically include that information in the contract. This is also true if your name and byline must be kept attached to the work. Here are some of the most common ownership terms and what they mean so that you are able to include them in your contracts. When you sell your work, you are usually selling rights to the client so that he or she can use the work in a specific way. If you sell the client 'first rights,' you are selling him or her the right to use your work for the first time. This would be relevant if you were selling your work to a magazine, or newspaper. This means that they are the first people to use your work, however, once the work has been published, you are the owner of the work again. When you sell 'reprint rights,' then you are selling someone the right to reprint your work. This means that it probably has been printed before, and they are not the first ones to print your work. Again, once it has been published somewhere, or used on a website, you are the owner of the work. This is useful for freelance writers who write articles or other copywriting projects. 'Publication rights' gives your clients the permission to publish your work in a specific form. This usually relates to a book or volume of some kind. You still own the work, but you are selling the right for the client to publish your work. The same thing happens with a newspaper or magazine, but this is called 'serial rights.' 'First Territorial rights' mean that you are giving the client permission to publish your work for the first time in a specific location. For example, you can sell first territorial rights to a client to publish your works for the first time in Europe. 'One time' rights would generally be used for a newspaper or something similar. This means that you are only giving the newspaper permission to publish your work one time, and that you are able to give any other newspaper you want permission to publish the same material. They may want to specify that the rights are exclusive to that area. This is normally so another newspaper that might be their competitors cannot publish the same thing. One thing you need to watch out for, especially if a client produces his own contract is a 'work for hire' rights. With this, you are selling all of your rights to the work, and the copyright. That means that you never get recognition or pay for your work ever. It no longer belongs to you at all and is the property of the person you sold it to. Unless you are specifically writing something for this reason, avoid this kind of rights. Now that you know the terms, you can include the proper ones in your contract to be sure you are selling what you want to sell and nothing else.
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