Via Amex has got into the crowdsourcing game announcing an exciting and innovative philanthropic program Members Project in which you can propose projects, vote on the projects of others, and in so doing qualify them for $2.5 million of funding from Amex. The slogan? “Your Ideas. Your Decision. Our Money.”
Meanwhile, and if I am to come up with a culprit I’ll plump for the culture of our much loved legal profession rather than any grasping of Amex senior decision makers, here’s what happens once your ideas have been crowdsourced.
You irrevocably assign to American Express all rights (including copyrights) in any ideas or expressions of ideas that you provide on or through the Project Site, including without limitation the Project Submission and all comments, suggestions, graphics, ideas (including product and advertising ideas), and other information or materials you submit on the Discussion Boards and otherwise on or through the Project Site (collectively, “User Content”), all of which will become and remain the exclusive property of American Express, including any future rights associated with such materials.
You’re not assigning rights to use, you’re handing over “all rights”. Crowdsourcing becomes crowdswiping.
Nicholas, the lawyers would have been paid the same, perhaps more, if the agreement merely granted Amex a non-exclusive right to use. It would raise a number of legal issues requiring further drafting. It’s a cheap shot that suggests to me you don’t actually know what lawyers do, particularly for sophisticated clients like American Express.
BBB
Thanks BBB.
You read too much into my comments. I wasn’t suggesting that lawyers were trying to enrich themselves. My own view is that the clause that appears is typical of a culture in which lawyers seek to maximise control for their clients (or in this case probably their employer). It is very understandable that they do this. It is also very unfortunate and leaves $100 bills on the pavement constantly.
You may disagree with them, and they may indeed be quite wrong – speculative as they were – but they my comments were not made by someone who has no experience of what he’s talking about. I run into this kind of nonsense constantly – as recently as last Friday to be precise.
To some extent it is a little unfair to attribute it to ‘legal culture’ though there is much to criticise in there. It is more a function of communication in a large organisation. It is usually less good than one might hope for. So it’s easier for the providers of legal advice to cover their arse rather than use their commonsense on behalf of the company and so claims of copyright are made as a matter of course, even where the company has no damn need to do so – as I suspect is the case here.
Fair enough. We share experience in these (or similar) matters, albeit from different sides of the table (I’m guessing). We differ in that you are giving the managers of Amex the benefit of the doubt, whereas I would assume, in the absence of any evidence, that they deliberately sought to acquire the rights, and had their lawyers draft it up that way. The terms as drafted aren’t nonsense; I prefer to call them brazen.
BBB
And fair enough from me too. You would perhaps be familiar with the kinds of problems I’m alluding to in my last comment. Lateral Economics has never done a single project for any government agency that didn’t propose that it acquire the copyright in our work, when it had no interest whatever in having any more than a licence to use as it wished.
Still, as you might say, that’s got more to do with govt than with lawyers. To which I say, ‘their respective cultures reinforce each other’.
cheers.