Contractor IP assignment audit
Years of freelancer and contractor work need clean assignment paperwork — not a 2017 NDA that says nothing about IP ownership.
Relevant: Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
IP for SaaS
Intellectual Property Solicitor for SaaS Businesses
A SaaS business is, in commercial terms, a stack of IP wrapped in customer contracts. When the IP layer underneath is informal — contractor code without assignment, open-source components without audit, AI components without training-data warranties — the contracts on top are load-bearing in ways no one has tested.
Intellectual Property Solicitor for SaaS Businesses.
SaaS founders, CTOs and operators across the Thames Valley and Oxford-to-Cambridge corridor. Particularly relevant where the business is approaching a priced funding round, an enterprise procurement process, or an acquisition.
SaaS IP problems almost never surface in the day-to-day. They surface in three places: investor diligence, enterprise customer security reviews, and acquirer Q&A. By the time they surface, the cost of remediation has multiplied. The work is best done before, not during.
Common matters on this page.
Customer IP warranty review
An enterprise customer wants warranties that your platform doesn't infringe third-party IP. We make sure you can actually back what you sign — and add appropriate carve-outs and caps.
AI training-data position
An AI-enabled feature has been trained on data you don't fully own. We structure a defensible position before the first enterprise customer asks the question.
Relevant: UK GDPR · EU AI Act
Open-source compliance
An audit of the OSS components in your codebase, with a remediation plan for any copyleft contamination that could affect commercial licensing.
Legal risks & how we manage them
What can go wrong — and how we contain it.
Contractor work where IP was never formally assigned — a single ex-contractor can disrupt an acquisition.
Clean assignment paperwork for every contractor whose code is in the product, signed before the next funding round.
Customer IP indemnities that go beyond what your insurance covers.
We cap and scope the indemnity in line with your real exposure, with realistic carve-outs.
Training-data warranties that you can't actually back.
We rewrite the warranty to describe what the model was trained on accurately — not what a marketing page implies.
Legislation that shapes this work.
- Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
- The statutory foundation for software copyright, IP assignment and the moral-rights waivers that need to sit in every contractor contract.
- Patents Act 1977
- Governs the patentability of software-implemented inventions and the inventor-ownership rules that catch out unwary employers.
- EU AI Act
- Drives transparency and provenance obligations that intersect with training-data ownership and model licensing.
FAQs
Questions we get asked.
- We've used contractors for years without formal IP assignments — how bad is that?
- Variable, but rarely fatal. The fix is a focused retrospective assignment exercise — usually short, sometimes uncomfortable, almost always cheaper than the cost of explaining the gap in a diligence Q&A.
- Can you audit our open-source position without slowing down engineering?
- Yes. We work alongside your engineers, not over their heads. The audit is a focused conversation plus a structured review, not a multi-week process.
- How early should we tighten our IP position?
- Before the round that values the IP. The work is materially cheaper before a diligence sprint than during one.
Topical cluster.
Talk to an IP solicitor for SaaS businesses.
Speak to Radcliffe Enterprise Law for clear, commercial legal advice — by phone, video or in person.
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