Is the third party an existing reseller of courses and yours will be some of that library? Is the third party not an existing reseller per se, e.g., a trade association, and you don't want them to offer your courses to their association members? Something else? Do you want to prevent the reselling entirely or do you want to include a % of revenue share if they resell to others? Are you asking about the course being protected or the content within the course being protected from re-purposing thereby creating a unique new course? Sorry for all of the questions- just trying to be helpful.
Hi David, This would be great if someone is able to offer any examples. It is always so difficult to know the standards or what traps/protections to be aware of up front. Like all small business owners, I have had lots of 'learning experiences' by some of my contract mistakes along the way. I found this book a few years ago, which has proved helpful - http://www.sharongivoni.com.au/owning-it/ (Australian).
It's a little complicated and I'll attempt to explain below.
We own some content that Company A wants to make available to its members via Company B's online market place. This will be behind Company A's login so courses won't be visible to the general public.
The agreement is that Company A will pay Company B to cover hosting costs. We will then receive sales revenues minus a cut paid to Company A.
The main issue for me is ensuring that if the agreement is terminated neither Company A or B can retain copies of our material on their servers for further resale.
I expect that standard Intellectual Property laws will protect the content from being 'ripped off' for want of a better phrase although as we all know there is some ambiguity around this subject.
1. since you are 2 parties away from the action it will be difficult for you to actually police and enforce/protect your revenue stream even though you might have a contract that covers the IP. I would think that the legal issues and the compliance problems will be too much for a small firm to pursue. Having said that...
2. did you consider placing your content on your own LMS and then having Company A be a subdomain on your LMS? That way, you control and protect your content from end to end and make more revenue streams. You do not need Company B and you get the opportunity to resell your own content as often as you wish and keep all of the revenue.
3. If you don't want to have your own LMS, then I would have within the contract that you have admin access to the LMS for report management or receive a report for your courses on a bi-weekly basis. You would need language between you and Company A to obtain this.
4. you could use a firm like LegalEase (about $75.00) that could get you started with the language.
Thanks for your reply, you've made some good points.
1. You're correct, regardless of what a contract says I know it's not easy to police. I think from my POV as long as there's an agreement in place to protect our IP on paper I'd be happy that I'd done what I can to protect our interests.
2. Company A already use content available via Company B's system so we've only ever considered putting our content there, mainly to make things easier for their end users (single sign in etc).
3. I like the suggestion that we should obtain admin access to the LMS. I will definitely follow this up.
4. I'll look up LegalEase, sounds like they could come in handy.
Someone else posted this link recently. You may be interested if you decide to go the route of taking more control over how your courses are distributed. https://contentcontroller.scorm.com/
7 Replies
Is the third party an existing reseller of courses and yours will be some of that library? Is the third party not an existing reseller per se, e.g., a trade association, and you don't want them to offer your courses to their association members? Something else? Do you want to prevent the reselling entirely or do you want to include a % of revenue share if they resell to others? Are you asking about the course being protected or the content within the course being protected from re-purposing thereby creating a unique new course? Sorry for all of the questions- just trying to be helpful.
Hi David, This would be great if someone is able to offer any examples. It is always so difficult to know the standards or what traps/protections to be aware of up front. Like all small business owners, I have had lots of 'learning experiences' by some of my contract mistakes along the way. I found this book a few years ago, which has proved helpful - http://www.sharongivoni.com.au/owning-it/ (Australian).
Hi David, thanks for taking the time to reply.
It's a little complicated and I'll attempt to explain below.
We own some content that Company A wants to make available to its members via Company B's online market place. This will be behind Company A's login so courses won't be visible to the general public.
The agreement is that Company A will pay Company B to cover hosting costs. We will then receive sales revenues minus a cut paid to Company A.
The main issue for me is ensuring that if the agreement is terminated neither Company A or B can retain copies of our material on their servers for further resale.
I expect that standard Intellectual Property laws will protect the content from being 'ripped off' for want of a better phrase although as we all know there is some ambiguity around this subject.
Hi Christine,
Thanks for your reply, and for the book recommendation.
David - some quick responses:
1. since you are 2 parties away from the action it will be difficult for you to actually police and enforce/protect your revenue stream even though you might have a contract that covers the IP. I would think that the legal issues and the compliance problems will be too much for a small firm to pursue. Having said that...
2. did you consider placing your content on your own LMS and then having Company A be a subdomain on your LMS? That way, you control and protect your content from end to end and make more revenue streams. You do not need Company B and you get the opportunity to resell your own content as often as you wish and keep all of the revenue.
3. If you don't want to have your own LMS, then I would have within the contract that you have admin access to the LMS for report management or receive a report for your courses on a bi-weekly basis. You would need language between you and Company A to obtain this.
4. you could use a firm like LegalEase (about $75.00) that could get you started with the language.
Hi David,
Thanks for your reply, you've made some good points.
1. You're correct, regardless of what a contract says I know it's not easy to police. I think from my POV as long as there's an agreement in place to protect our IP on paper I'd be happy that I'd done what I can to protect our interests.
2. Company A already use content available via Company B's system so we've only ever considered putting our content there, mainly to make things easier for their end users (single sign in etc).
3. I like the suggestion that we should obtain admin access to the LMS. I will definitely follow this up.
4. I'll look up LegalEase, sounds like they could come in handy.
Thanks again.
Someone else posted this link recently. You may be interested if you decide to go the route of taking more control over how your courses are distributed. https://contentcontroller.scorm.com/
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