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Who owns the intellectual property, data, code, etc. with our white label apps

Who owns what is a common question. Our goal is to give partners as much control and protection as possible when it comes to intellectual property and data, without impairing our ability to do what we do or giving them unnecessary burdens. We don’t want you to be forced to use us, we want you to choose to use us. This document outlines our goals, and we’ve quoted from the standard contract (accurate as of July 2017). If you have any questions, please get in touch.

We offer the complete package; we handle the hardware, the software, the app stores, the customer service, etc. You won’t need to do anything technical. This saves you a huge amount of work and keeps everything simple. This also means we don’t send you code to run; we keep all that on our servers. And that code which runs our whole platform is our secret sauce and belongs to us.

The platform has a common set of functionality for everyone. If you need some custom functionality (which is different to custom design work) by default the new feature will belong to us; if you need to own it or need exclusivity, we do offer this. However, it’s rare, and often expensive. Part of the reason we can offer a well priced service is because we’re building a single platform and new features help benefit everyone.

We split the “IP” of a product into two rough parts; the look and feel of the app, and the code and function. You own the former and license it to us, we own the latter and license it to you. If we part ways, you could build your own technology and it can look the same as the app you had with us, but we don’t loose the protection we need on our own technology. Also, we’d be really sad.

The Intellectual Property Rights in the Application and the Website (other than the Open-Source Software, the Third-Party Software or Partner Materials) are, and shall remain, the property of M14 Industries (or the appropriate third-party rights-owner(s), if any). The Partner shall use best endeavours to prevent any infringement of the Intellectual Property Rights in the Partner Materials and shall promptly report to M14 Industries any such infringement that comes to its attention or any circumstances which may lead to such infringement.

The Partner acquires no rights in or to the M14 Industries Software, Bespoke Software or Additional Works or the Documents other than those expressly granted by this agreement.

We don’t own your logo, your color scheme, your font choices etc.

Partner Materials: Any Intellectual Property Rights owned, held or developed by the Partner that is used or is required to be used by M14 Industries for the purposes of this agreement, and shall include the Partner branding whether registered or unregistered intellectual property.

[…]

The Partner grants to M14 Industries a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide licence to use the Partner Materials for the purposes of and in connection with this agreement.

When it comes to the data inside the system, we understand the value this has to everyone. We need it for the service to function, and to derive insights we can feed back to you to optimize and improve services. You need it for marketing, your own insights, and if ever we part ways.

To keep things simple, and so only one party has to deal with all the laws around data ownership, we own the data and our Partners have access to it, even if the contract is terminated. This means we are the data controller, and you keep the value of the data (without the burden of data ownership).

M14 Industries acknowledges that it will be the data controller of the Data.

Upon termination of this agreement, the Data shall be transferred to the Partner and the Partner shall own such rights, title and interest in the Data that M14 Industries may transfer.

If you have any other questions, please get in touch and we’d be happy to work with you.

We would love to discuss our wider partnership vision with you