Licensing & Commercial Agreements

The terms in a commercial agreement determine whether it protects you when the relationship is tested, so the value is in how those terms are drafted and negotiated. Hank has drafted and negotiated commercial agreements, IP licenses, software licenses, SaaS subscriptions, and development agreements for more than 29 years, for the businesses that depend on getting them right.

A license is a document that permits someone to use intellectual property or some other set of rights owned by the grantor of those rights. Hank negotiates whether a license is exclusive or nonexclusive, the territory and field of use it covers, how long it runs, whether the licensee can sublicense the rights, and what the licensor is paid, whether a flat fee, a per-seat charge, or a royalty tied to revenue. Software and SaaS agreements address uptime, service levels, data ownership, security, support obligations, and what happens to your data when the subscription ends. Those terms allocate the loss when the product fails or the relationship sours.

Development and consulting agreements turn on ownership of what gets built. Absent a written assignment, a contractor who writes your code or designs your site owns the copyright in it, not the company that paid for it, so Hank drafts assignments and work-for-hire terms that deliver ownership of the copyright interests to you. Those documents define the scope of work and the acceptance criteria that determine when a job is finished and payment is due, and set the confidentiality, indemnification, warranty, and liability terms that allocate risk when a third party claims the deliverables infringe or the product causes a loss.

Hank has papered these agreements for software companies licensing a platform, businesses buying technology they depend on, consultants and agencies selling their services, and founders protecting what they build, so you get terms negotiated by a lawyer who also litigates them when a dispute arises. Every engagement works toward the same result, an agreement that says what you agreed to and stays enforceable when the other side reads it back to you.