[San-Diego-pm] [OT] IP contracts for books?

[Bruce Timberlake]

Sorry for using the list for a non-Perl specific question...

I know a few people on the list have been involved with writing books. I 
have been approached by a company to develop some courseware for them. 
Their standard contract has me assigning all IP rights for everything 
to them, and I'm not keen on that. I think it would legally limit my 
business options in the future.

Do any of you authors have samples of your contracts that you would be 
willing to share, specifically the parts dealing with IP rights and 
assignment? I'm trying to find the right wording to counter-propose to 
them and I don't have the $$ or time to try and track down an IP 
attorney.

I'm mainly concerned with being able to continue using my knowledge in a 
non-competing fashion. I.e., I don't want to be in the courseware 
business myself, but I would like to be able to legally use any code 
snippets I develop for the courseware in other products, offer training 
on the content topics to existing or future clients that may ask about 
it, or sell/license similar content to other venues in the future if 
the opportunity arose.

Thanks for any help you might be able to provide. Please email me off 
list (bruce at brtnet dot org) unless you think it would be useful to 
others as well.

- Bruce