Posted By Michael
Hi All,

If a company employs an external consultant to do their H&S Policy, arrangements etc, is the consultant the owner of the documentation or the company paying for his services, could it be copywrite to him?

Thanks

Mike

Posted By Dave Wilson
NO the client has paid for the Intellectual Property rights.

If an internal H&S manager writes a policy for his company then it also belongs to the company as well and in reality the H&S bod when they leave should not take it with them!

Posted By Ian G Hutchings
Mike

When you say 'the system' is this documents or online. If it is some sort of online database there may be copyright or IP issues; though if you have paid for it it should be by rights the company's document.

Best regards

Ian

Posted By R Joe
Practically, it depends how specific it is but as the last post indicated, the contractual agreement is key. In the absence of any specific contractual agreement (ie as in poor consultancy practice) you'll find that copyright usually stays with the creator ie the consultant. The more generic parts of a consultant's work have to stay with the consultant albeit that the client can (or should) be able to continue using it under the original agreement that they paid for, otherwise how could the consultant continue to operate, and what would stop the company passing or selling the consultant's work on to others?

Standard consultancy T&C will reflect this, along with use by the client under licence.

Posted By Sarah Sahc
Hi Mike,

It depends on the contractural arrangements between the external consultant and the company.

As an internal employee employed by the company, anything that he does in his working day, that he is employed to do is the property of the company. However, the law is slightly different for external consultants and anything that is produced by the consultant is intellectually owned by him and therefore his copyrighted material unless he surrenders that copyright to the company. Also some consultants license out their work, whereby they may produce something for your company to use but only licence your company to use it (your company never owns it).

The protection by the consultant is to stop you company/individual then using their copyrighted/intellectual property rights and selling the work or passing the work on. If there is no formal agreement that the intellectual property rights will be passed on the the company I would argue that the copyright remains with the consultant as he has been paid to produce a document 'fit for purpose' and not to give you rights over that document to reproduce it in any way - the consultant owns the information. There are cases however, where the company may stipulate that although the consultant reserves his right to own the copyright the company can put into place a contractual arrangement that the consultant will not reproduce this work for another organisation - such as their competitors for example when they are tendering for the same contract.

Posted By Robert K Lewis
The only things where a consultant could hold intellectual rights are where he has specifically included materials unique to his organisation. Materials gained from the client are outside of this as are publicly available documents. The format of the system may also be subject to certain rights if it also is unique to the consultant. But with so many styles and structures publicly available this is very unlikely.

The client has paid for the services of the consultant to structure the materials, which are highly likely to be the clients own documents. Thus as, with an employee, the client has the right to hold the intellectual rights on the content.

Look at the old consultancy agreement and see what it states. Even if it claims copyright this may be invalid and merely a smokescreen.

Your alternative is to strip out any commercially confidential materials owned by the consultant and replace it with substitute systems and format the system to how you actually manage the organisation. Not providing a client with an electronic copy of documents to allow update in house is the height of bad manners and certainly leads to a loss of business ultimately. Clients do not like to be boxed into a corner and forced into choice of only one consultant - many regard it as sharp practice.

Bob

Posted By Bob Shillabeer
This arguement is rather pointless in myview. A company employs a consultant to develope a safety policy. If the policy is owned by the consultant its not the company's policy so where is the problem? When a company policy is developed,using whatever model to develop it, when it is completed it becomes the company's policy, who signs it off ,normally the company chairman or head such as the chief executive, that makes it the company's policy so it belongs to the company and is thier property. So where is the confusion from?