Questions Answered and Thanks Given

Matt Riley

the original idea for Idea Bounty

Yesterday was launch day for us. It was frantic, nerve wrecking and super exciting.

The response was really great and a big thanks to the over 200 creative’s who have registered so far and started submitting Ideas.

We started off at 6am and were pinned to our chairs by the back and forth buzz on twitter , blogs and direct mails via the site. At about 3:30 we had a breather and started collecting the feedback. What was clear is that there were some really important questions that needed to be answered.

We (the core team behind Idea Bounty) all have ideas very close to our hearts. Whether from working in large Advertising agencies, or starting businesses from our university dorm rooms, ideas have allowed us to earn a living. So it was with great respect for creative people that we set out to build Idea Bounty. Sure we need to eventually make some money, but we will never do that without the people that are contributing Ideas. So it’s important we look after them as best as we possibly can. With this in mind we wanted to answer some questions we got yesterday in this post. We will be updating our FAQ's tomorrow.

Idea Bounty is totally rocking and a massive thanks to everyone who have given us feedback, constructive criticism, praise and the odd heckle. It’s all going to make the offering even better!

This site cannot exist without the people that have started contributing Ideas and its these people we value most.

Your questions answered ….

IMPORTANT STUFF BEFORE FURTHER :

The answers below should not be seen as legal advice and please don’t rely on them as such.

Our terms and conditions have been drawn up in accordance with South African law.

When we refer to Idea with a capital ‘I’ it refers to an Idea you have submitted to Idea Bounty.

How do you decide that my Idea is worth?

We like to think of it in terms of how much value you attach to your own Ideas.

The value of the Bounty is predetermined and this should guide the creative in how much work he/she should produce. If you believe your Idea is worth $10,000 and the Bounty is $1,000, then you should not submit your idea.

It’s very important to us that it’s really clear how much a brand is willing to pay you (the creative) for your Idea. That’s why we make it big and bold.

Ultimately, the value of the Bounty will determine whether a Creative is prepared to invest the time and effort into submitting it, and ultimately hand it over to the client.

If my Idea gets used and it becomes huge will I get paid more money?

Unfortunately not, and there is good reason why. The end value of the Idea is so strongly linked to the production of it (how it comes to life in its end form) that it’s impossible to answer a question like, ‘did the idea make that TV ad great, or was the director a genius in how he chose to film and edit it?’ . When you submit an Idea on Idea bounty we don’t expect it to be ready to go to print, air on TV, go live on the web etc.

We expect a really well thought out idea with room for adaptation to a brands specific need.

Does copyright protect Intellectual Property (IP), in this case ideas?

Whilst your rights to your ideas themselves are generally not capable of protection, the physical form in which you express them may well be. Copyright arises automatically on the creation of the physical expression of your idea (be it in the form of copy, graphics or a combination of them). Copyright is the most common form of intellectual property right and protects the words, numbers and drawings expressing your Idea, irrespective of whether or not they are set out on paper or in electronic format.

Although you may not be able to protect the idea underlying your work, you should keep as much physical and electronic evidence of your work as possible. This will greatly assist you in proving your copyright in the product of your labour. This is where Idea Bounty comes into play. Just by reducing an Idea to written/graphic format and submitting to Idea Bounty, you (the creative) will be establishing copyright in the materials (your description of the idea and supporting stuff like images and video)

The law on copyright (and, indeed, other intellectual property rights such as design rights, trade marks and patents) is complex and extensive, and differs from country to country. We cannot offer you specific legal advice on how best to protect your ideas but we try to make sure we give you some tools to protect your work, like the contract both you and our clients sign, the unique reference number each Idea is assigned, and the time stamp on each interaction a client has with your Idea.

Ultimately, the protection for a ‘Winning Idea’ is found in the Assignment Agreement which the creative and the client sign. This has important details like the Idea reference number (we assign each Idea a unique number) and how much the client is willing to pay for that Idea (as it’s been recorded on Idea Bounty and assigned a unique reference number)

So, what IP rights are being transferred under the signing of the Assignment Agreement?

Once you and the Client have both signed an Assignment Agreement, you will have “assigned” (or sold) all of your rights in the work that you have submitted. This operates in much the same manner as a sale of an ordinary physical object, like a car. Once you have assigned all of your rights, you may not then exploit the work yourself or try to sell or license parts of it, or the whole of it, to any other person, seeing as you no longer own any rights to it. You wouldn’t be able to sell your car to another person once you’ve already sold it to someone else, would you?

Can a Client still use my Idea legally if they slightly change the way I’ve described it?

Although the expression of your Idea is protected by copyright, the idea underlying it is not. Idea Bounty was designed and set up for Creatives, and we genuinely understand your concerns in this regard. Whilst there are inherent dangers in the transmission of ideas, our Clients have all agreed to comply with our Client Terms and Conditions and we consider breaches of these in a very serious light. The Client Terms and Conditions contain various clauses we can enforce should a Client misuse our services. There are also a number of legal options available to you to protect against wrongful use of your work and an IP lawyer will be able to advise you on these.

Misuse of ideas is an unfortunate reality in media worldwide, and is a danger to Creatives irrespective of whether you are a large Ad Agency pitching for new business or whether you are an individual using Idea Bounty.

Of course, we don’t ever want you to have to involve yourself in legal action because one of our clients has stolen your idea, so we have taken various steps to guard against misuse of your Ideas:

We review our Clients before accepting them and work with them to explain how the site works and how best to use it
Idea Bounty has the right to suspend a Client’s account if they do not comply with our terms and conditions or we suspect them of plotting to do so.
We record every single interaction both Creatives and Clients have with the site. This means we know when a Client views an idea. So we can easily prove what Ideas have been viewed and when.

Our legal contracts have been drafted and examined by IP lawyers and we are confident that they are robust and protect both our clients and our creative community.

I hope that makes things clearer for everyone who had questions. Please get in touch if you have any more.