I had a quick question I wanted to ask here instead of a lawyer and paying a couple hundred dollars for this. My team currently will not be creating a legal company until we get further down our development. We will be contracting an artist to the team. The question is, can the contract be between the artist and me(a person and not a company)? If not, how can our team contract him. Who or what do we contract him too? Yes I will be going to a lawyer for all of this, but I wanted to get the little questions out now to try and save money by the hours by not asking these then. I know lawyers cost money and we should have it, but the least I can do is skim off the few bits that I can.

> can the contract be between the artist and me

Sure. Adults can sign contracts. Things get complicated if at least one party is a minor. Hope this is not the case here.

> try and save money

Let's see. You need a lawyer to draft a contract between you and the artist to have the work done and acquire the IP rights herein. Then you need that same lawyer again so that you can make the IP available to the company, either through an outright IP rights transfer or via some licensing agreement.

The most effective way would be to register the company and then contract out what you need through it. Running a business is not without costs, sorry. And in the software world (or any knowledge-based industry for that matter), trying to save a few pennies on IP rights is not a wise business decision.

-cb

Thank you very much for the help.

Yeah we are thinking to register the company and make it easier on us. We don't mind spending the money. We just like to skim off where we can and use that money else where.

In most cases when you don't want to go through the process of limiting liability, collaboration teams without any kind of business/entity license are treated as general partners. If the artist contracts with only you, you're the only person liable on the contract and the other collaborators working with you aren't. This also means that you'll be paying out of your own pocket. If that's what you plan on doing anyway, fine. If you want everyone to chip in, you'll need to identify the contracting parties differently.

If you identify "collaboration team" as one of the contracting parties and define that team as the individual partners who will ultimately make up the managers and members of your LLC or constituent members of your company, then those individuals will be liable. That means everyone is on the hook equally, unless your collaboration agreement (you do have one, don't you?) says otherwise.

Once you go forward with creating a legal entity, you will need to assign the agreement to the new entity, and you will likely need the written approval (depending on how the lawyer drafts the assignment clause) of the artist team you're contracting with for that assignment. Bear in mind that your new entity will not simply inherit that contract without some additional action on your part via a signed assignment.