IP Assignment Agreement
Moves ownership of what was created to the company.
Legal rights in creations of the mind, including trademarks, copyrights and sometimes trade secrets. Social media campaigns rely heavily on IP: logos, brand names, video footage, photos, captions, music and UGC must all be cleared and used under the proper licences.
- Business days
- 1–5Business days
- Lawyer reviewed
- 100%Lawyer reviewed
- Surprise bills
- $0Surprise bills
What an IP Assignment Agreement should include
What is assigned — the specific work, and anything created in connection with it.
Present assignment — wording that transfers ownership now, not a promise to transfer later.
Moral rights — addressed expressly, because in Canada they are separate from copyright and are waived rather than assigned.
Pre-existing material — what the creator brought with them and is keeping, and the licence the company gets to it.
Further assurances — an obligation to sign whatever a registration later requires.
Consideration — what the creator receives, recorded on the face of the document.
When you need one
Whenever someone outside the company creates something the company needs to own — a contractor building your product, a designer making your brand, a developer writing code. Investors and acquirers look for these specifically, and a gap found during diligence is expensive to close retroactively.
How Ruby drafts it
Tell us what you need
Describe the agreement, your business context, and how fast you need it. A few smart questions, not a legal questionnaire. Your price and turnaround are confirmed before anything starts.
Ruby drafts it
Once pricing is confirmed a qualified Ruby lawyer is assigned to your file, and the first draft is built from your answers and real Canadian statute.
A licensed lawyer reviews every line
A lawyer licensed in Canada reviews and finalizes the document before it reaches you, and writes the plain-language summary that comes with it.
Signed, stored, and yours to revisit
You get the final agreement and its summary, stored so you can come back to it rather than hunting through email for the current version.
The fee is set before any of that starts. Hourly billing moves as scope does; a flat fee is one number, confirmed in writing, that doesn’t change after the work is done. See how Ruby prices agreements.
Or did you mean one of these?
These get confused with an IP Assignment Agreement often enough to be worth ruling out before you buy the wrong document.
Questions people ask
Sometimes, and it is worth checking rather than assuming. A contractor agreement that is silent on ownership, or that only licenses the work, leaves the company without what it thinks it bought.
They are rights of the author concerning integrity and attribution, and they sit separately from the economic rights in copyright. Canadian practice is to deal with them by waiver, which is why a well-drafted assignment addresses them expressly rather than relying on the assignment alone.
Yes, and that is a common reason to sign one — closing a gap on work delivered before anyone papered it. The document should be clear that it reaches back to that earlier work.
Looking for the plain definition rather than the document? See IP Assignment Agreement in the Ruby legal glossary.
This page is general information about Canadian business law and is not legal advice. Laws differ by province and change over time, and how they apply depends on your circumstances. For advice on your situation, speak with a lawyer licensed in your province.
Need a IP Assignment Agreement?
Ruby drafts it for a flat $499 CAD, confirmed before any work begins, with a licensed Canadian lawyer on every document.