Who owns the work when it is finished?
What agencies and studios need to publish
This determines whether the client actually gets what they think they are buying, and it is a common source of dispute.
How customers actually ask it
The same intent arrives in wording your page probably does not use. All of these mean the same thing:
- “Who owns the work when it is finished?”
- “intellectual property”
- “do I own the design”
- “can I use it anywhere”
- “source files”
What a complete answer contains
For agencies and studios specifically, an answer is only complete when it covers all 5:
- 1
When IP transfers — usually on final payment, and this should be explicit
- 2
Whether source files are included or extra
- 3
Any licensed components the client must license separately, such as fonts or stock
- 4
Whether you retain any rights, including portfolio use
- 5
What happens to IP if the project is cancelled part-way
A worked example
Illustrative — not a real business
Full ownership of all deliverables transfers to you on final payment, including editable source files. Fonts and stock imagery are licensed to you directly and remain subject to their own terms. We retain the right to show the work in our portfolio unless you ask us not to. On cancellation, you own everything paid for to that point.
Which page should own it
Terms of engagement, summarised on the process page
What silence costs
IP disputes are expensive, relationship-ending, and almost entirely preventable with one clear paragraph.
More questions agencies and studios get
Related
industry
AI customer support for agencies
Agencies field two kinds of question: what do you do, and what does it cost. Both are answerable from the site, and both currently interrupt someone senior. RubyRep answers them from your services and case study pages, and doubles as something you can deploy on client sites.
term
What is AI customer service?
AI customer service means answering customer questions with a language model rather than a person. The useful implementations are grounded in a specific business's own content; the poor ones let a general model improvise, which produces confident answers that are wrong.
term
What is a knowledge base?
Traditionally a knowledge base is a help centre humans read. For AI support it is the source material a representative answers from — which means an ordinary website, well written, can serve as one without a separate help centre.
Does your site answer this already?
Point RubyRep at your website and ask it this exact question. If it cannot answer, neither can your customers.