Work for Hire agreement request from customer

[sariahmansoer]

Hi All,



I received a work for hire agreement from a customer which he wants me to sign.

Now normally with some of my customers I had it written per order and within a own made document referring to the order.

The document I received is called a CERTIFICATE OF AUTHORSHIP and it has a lot of text in it and I want to be careful before I sign such a thing.

Does anyone has tips for that. Do I need to sign it or should I make my own document.



The thing that worries me in the agreement are the following lines:



" Writer agrees that in the event of any dispute regarding the Work, Writer nor any of Writer’s representatives or successors shall have the right to seek or obtain injunctive or other equitable relief, termination of rights or contract, or rescission of rights or contract in connection with the Work and/or the exploitation, advertising, marketing, merchandising, promotion and/or co-promotion thereof. It is understood that the foregoing shall inure to the benefit of Owner and Owner’s parents, affiliates, subsidiaries, successors, designees, assigns and licensees and that Owner is acting in material reliance upon this certificate of authorship.

This agreement shall be governed by the laws of the state of California applicable to contracts to be wholly negotiated and performed therein. Any claim, dispute or disagreement with respect to this agreement shall be submitted to the courts of the state of California, or the federal courts within the state of California, which courts shall have the exclusive jurisdiction thereof.

WRITER SPECIFICALLY ACKNOWLEDGES THAT WRITER HAS BEEN ADVISED TO SEEK WRITER’S OWN INDEPENDENT LEGAL COUNSEL CONCERNING THE LEGAL EFFECT OF THIS AGREEMENT AND WRITER HAS EITHER OBTAINED SUCH COUNSEL OR HAS INTENTIONALLY REFRAINED FROM DOING SO AND HAS KNOWINGLY AND VOLUNTARILY WAIVED SUCH RIGHT."



I’m also having this document checked with my brother-in-law who is a lawyer, but I think other people on Fiverr probably had a situation like this .



Do you have any advice ?



Thanks very much !

Sariah

[misscrystal]

It is very heavy handed for this venue. I wouldn’t accept it. We are not supposed to use our real names on fiverr nor share contact information so the idea of signing a contract is not applicable.

The buyer is apparently in California. Are you in California? USA? Was this a $5 gig?
Regardless of the answers, this is far beyond the scope of fiverr gigs on many levels.

[willpower_hk]

Reply to @misscrystal:
I agree. That’s probably not how it normally works on Fiverr. Be it a $5 gig or a $500 custom order, I don’t feel safe to sign such a certificate. It seems it deprives the writer of his or her reasonable rights when there’s a dispute. What if the buyer takes the work then launches a chargeback?

[sariahmansoer]

That’s exact my feeling about it. I’m outside the US. To be honest. I’m in Europe. So Laws are different. It is a total of a $ 10 gig and Exactly the name is stated. Also he made a mistake in his contract saying Fiver.com. If I would sign it he could never sue me because the name is written wrongly and not only once,but twice.
I agree with @willpower_hk regarding any dispute. It’s too risky for just 1 $10 gig. I would not mind writing my own agreement as I did with an other customer. I think I will just ask if he would agree with that.
Besides that I have read the copyright rights on Fiverr. It is already stated that he will own all rights after the gig is delivered.
Thank you for your comments. I really wanted to be sure I was thinking in the right direction.

[misscrystal]

It is very poorly written, with bad grammar such as this gem:

“Writer nor any of Writer’s representatives or successors shall have the right to seek or obtain injunctive or other equitable relief…”

That should be “Writer AND any of” or the word “Neither” should start the sentence if they keep the word “nor” in it.

[sariahmansoer]

Yes and the text before that is very bad as well. I mean he uses 3 different words which means the same and though I’m not a native English speaker , but I did see a lot of mistakes ( thanks to google translate 🙂 )
I’m so glad with your help .Really it helps me a lot in this situation and helps me to prevent making a mistake.

[sincere18]

Reply to @sariahmansoer: No do not sign anything like this, and DO NOT write your own agreement with this person. YOu should not be giving out your personal name and contact information to Fiverr buyers.

Also, anything you create yourself may or may not even be legal because just for the fact someone is buying through Fiverr, Fiverr has clear Terms of SErvice, so you cannot just make up your own rules about it. So even if you do sign a document it may not hold up in a court of law is that document says anything different than the Terms of Service her eon Fiverr…