St Louis Business Daily

How enforceable is a company's claim to own the intellectual property in any ideas that may be shared with it?

Under "terms and conditions" on some company websites, they state that "your submission of any [comments, ideas, notes, suggestions, etc] shall constitute an assignment to us of all worldwide rights, titles and interests in all copyrights and other intellectual property rights in the submission". How enforceable is this? I am a designer and have sent images from my portfolio along with my resume to some companies. Could they really claim intellectual property rights to my ideas simply because I have shared them in the act of seeking a job?

Public Comments

1. In nearly all cases, you need a specific, written assignment for a copyright transfer. I suspect the typical boilerplate "terms and conditions" will not be enforceable (or at the very least, very difficult to enforce in most courts). http://www.ivanhoffman.com/transfers.html