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What type of paperwork do you have so far? If you don't have any, and you have been the one actually developing the product, you hold all the leverage. They wil

What type of paperwork do you have so far? If you don't have any, and you have been the one actually developing the product, you hold all the leverage. They will have a great deal of difficulty raising if they don't own the IP, and in the absence of any previous written agreement that assigns the IP to the company itself, it's yours to do what you want with. I certainly would not sign any sort of release unless it included language that commits the company to compensate you by a specific date. That way, by that date, they will either have to pay you or forfeit their right to your work.

helpwithpayout 13y ago
I've been given a "Confidential Information and Invention Assignment Agreement" as well as a "Termination Certificate". Basically giving ownership of my IP and ending my work. No paperwork before this. We are all technical, we all wrote code. My contributions to the code are non-trivial and useful, but they could ultimately take out my contributions and create something else on their own that has the same results. If they removed all of my code contributions, would I still be in any position to ask for compensation for my work? I think simply having it in the contract that I'll be paid by a certain date sounds like a good plan.
- milkshakes 13y ago
  If they're asking you to sign over your IP, the way I would interpret that is they are aware of the complications that arise when fundraising without having IP airtight. It's a question that every investor will ask, if not at first then certainly in diligence. If there's any possibility that your contributions were 'novel' (in the legal sense), then what's more relevant than how easily they could replace those contributions having seen how you solved the problem the first time is how core your contributions were to the product itself. If what you collectively have built depends on what you personally have built, and cannot function without it, and raising money is how your ex-cofounders plan to fund their operation, I would not want to be them. You can basically set your terms. On a final note, if this is the first paperwork you've seen, I'm curious as to what exactly the "termination certificate" purports to terminate. Edit: I am not a lawyer, but I have been around many early stage fallouts. If you'd like to talk to a lawyer, my friends at LawGives would probably love to help you out.
deleted 13y ago
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helpwithpayout 13y ago

I've been given a "Confidential Information and Invention Assignment Agreement" as well as a "Termination Certificate". Basically giving ownership of my IP and ending my work. No paperwork before this. We are all technical, we all wrote code. My contributions to the code are non-trivial and useful, but they could ultimately take out my contributions and create something else on their own that has the same results. If they removed all of my code contributions, would I still be in any position to ask for compensation for my work? I think simply having it in the contract that I'll be paid by a certain date sounds like a good plan.

milkshakes 13y ago
If they're asking you to sign over your IP, the way I would interpret that is they are aware of the complications that arise when fundraising without having IP airtight. It's a question that every investor will ask, if not at first then certainly in diligence. If there's any possibility that your contributions were 'novel' (in the legal sense), then what's more relevant than how easily they could replace those contributions having seen how you solved the problem the first time is how core your contributions were to the product itself. If what you collectively have built depends on what you personally have built, and cannot function without it, and raising money is how your ex-cofounders plan to fund their operation, I would not want to be them. You can basically set your terms. On a final note, if this is the first paperwork you've seen, I'm curious as to what exactly the "termination certificate" purports to terminate. Edit: I am not a lawyer, but I have been around many early stage fallouts. If you'd like to talk to a lawyer, my friends at LawGives would probably love to help you out.

deleted 13y ago

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