Deed · Technology, Media & Telecommunications / IT Contracts
Deed of assignment of intellectual property and moral rights consent (contractor or developer software)
A deed by which a contractor, freelance developer or former founder assigns copyright and other IP in software and related material to a company, with a moral rights consent, further assurance, a schedule of pre-existing and open-source material, and execution blocks.
- Kind
- Deed. A deed that must be executed as a deed.
- Where it applies
- Australia
- AI use
- Yellow AI can help in set ways. A lawyer checks specific points before use.
- Law stated as at
- 18 October 2026
- Status
- Maintained. Checked on 18 October 2026 against the 3 authorities it cites, for Australia.
- Version
- 1
- Source
- Written for this library
When to use it
Use to clean up ownership before an investment, sale or launch where code was written by contractors, agencies or founders before the company existed, or where the development contract did not assign IP effectively. Employees under a contract of service are usually covered by the Copyright Act ownership rule and an employment contract, not this deed.
How AI may be used
AI may fill the parties and build the schedule of assigned and excluded material from the repository history and contracts, but a lawyer confirms who actually wrote what, what third-party code is excluded and how the deed is executed.
AI may
- Fill the parties, dates and consideration into the approved deed
- Draft Schedule 1 from the repository, commit history and statements of work, and Schedule 2 from a dependency or licence scan, for the lawyer to verify
- List contributors in the commit history who have not signed an assignment
AI must not
- Must not state who authored code or that third-party or open-source code is excluded without the evidence being checked by a person
- Must not widen the moral rights consent beyond specified acts and works, because a general consent may have no effect under s 195AWA(3)
- Must not upload source code to a tool that retains or trains on it
The lawyer checks
- The assignor actually owns the IP, or the deed also binds the agency or employer that does
- Schedule 2 lists pre-existing material, open-source components and third-party code, and their licences are compatible with the company’s plans
- The moral rights consent names the acts or omissions and the works, as s 195AWA(3) requires
- The deed is executed as a deed under the law of the place of signing, and stamp duty or tax consequences of the consideration have been considered
Method: how the Green, Yellow and Red levels are decided. This is guidance for planning, not legal advice.
Read the full text
The full text is for signed-in accounts. It is free. When you sign in you can:
- read the whole precedent, with its drafting notes beside it;
- copy it, or download it as a Word file or Markdown;
- add it to your firm’s knowledge base, so colleagues can find it;
- let the AI tools you connect read it from that knowledge base.
The summary, the law it rests on and the AI-use guidance above stay public. Privacy.
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