What Do You Mean I Don´t Own That Ad? I Paid For It - How To Keep Your Intellectual Property Rights In Advertising Campaigns

Most companies understand the importance of advertising and marketing to maintain momentum in their brand. It may come as a surprise, but if you engage an ad agency to provide you with advertising or marketing ideas, you may not own the intellectual property rights in the ideas that are presented to you - even though you paid for them.

In most cases, agreements between companies and ad agencies include a clause that allows the ad agency to retain the intellectual property rights in the ideas or campaign they come up with, even though the company paid for the agency's time and effort in creating the idea or campaign.

However, as a recent example shows, there is a way to obtain ownership of those ideas or campaign.

Recently, Red Bull approached about a dozen marketing agencies to test their interest in working for the company by asking them to develop event ideas and promotional projects. Red Bull agreed to pay each "ideas provider" $2,500 for their efforts. The catch was that the moment the idea was presented to Red Bull, the global intellectual property rights would transfer to Red Bull and they would not be obliged to use the agency that created the idea to execute the marketing campaign.

This is neither new nor illegal. Companies are well within their rights to enter into contracts with ad agencies where the intellectual property rights attaching to any ideas produced by the ad agency are automatically assigned to the company.

If this approach seems appealing to you, then you should ensure that you have a written agreement with the ad agency you engage and specify ownership details of each element of the work that will be created. Make sure that the agreement gives you ownership rights or, alternatively, a license that is broad enough so that you can use the ideas or campaign how, when and where you want.

For ad agencies, whether you want to maintain ownership over the ideas and campaigns created by your agency or give some of your rights away, then you should review your agreements to make sure that they work for you.

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The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.