Where are intellectual property rights laid out by Upwork

[a7e7730f]

I just want to make sure that if I pay for something, illustrations in my case, that those illustrations are unique and all rights and licenses for those illustrations belong to me and I can use them anywhere for any purpose.   Maybe I'm  overlooking where that is covered by Upwork but I don't see it, at least in terms the average person can understand. I've looked at  a fair amount  of their TOS and lots of their other legalese and it seems to be focused on protecting Upwork's rights, etc.  Where is the info about my rights as a client? And if you say "It's in their Terms of Service", well where specifically? I've read a great deal of the TOS. I followed one link to their TOS where it supposedly covered intellectual property rights and that info was not there.  They don't make it easy. to find.

[petra_r]

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Craig J wrote:

I just want to make sure that if I pay for something, illustrations in my case, that those illustrations are unique and all rights and licenses for those illustrations belong to me and I can use them anywhere for any purpose.   Maybe I'm  overlooking where that is covered by Upwork but I don't see it, at least in terms the average person can understand. I've looked at  a fair amount  of their TOS and lots of their other legalese and it seems to be focused on protecting Upwork's rights, etc.  Where is the info about my rights as a client? And if you say "It's in their Terms of Service", well where specifically?

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Here under 6.4

[prestonhunter]

re: "I just want to make sure that if I pay for something, illustrations in my case, that... all rights and licenses for those illustrations belong to me and I can use them anywhere for any purpose."

Yes. That is correct. As you will see in the ToS section that Petra pointed you to.

re: "I just want to make sure that if I pay for something, illustrations in my case, that those illustrations are unique..."

Are the illustrations unique?

Short answer: Yes.

More nuanced answer:

Craig: I have hired about 20 artists on Upwork to create original artwork for me. My experience doing so has been overwhelmingly positive. HOWEVER: I have read stories in the Community Forum which describe clients having experiences which were not 100% positive.

If you hire an Upwork freelancer to create unique illustrations for you, then, yes, the illustrations WILL BE UNIQUE.

Unless they aren't.

They are SUPPOSED to be unique.

But there are SOME freelancers on Upwork who are not 100% professional or honest. We try to weed them out as much as we can. But this is a BIG site, with a LOT of freelancers, and some bad apples sneak in.

I have never had this happen to me. But some clients have hired freelancers who delivered plagiarized work, or work they copied from the Internet.

Upwork has no way of guaranteeing that this won't happen.

Check the work that you receive. Prepare to stop working with any freelancer whose work doesn't measure up to your standards in any way, whether it be style, quality, or originality.

[florydev]

Not an attorney...but...

If you are really concerned about this then I would make it clear in your job posting that providing a signed and noterized Assignment of Intellectual Property will be required before you review the job performance.  I have done this for a client and would not hesitate to do so again.  

If are further concerned then I would file for either a Copyright (most likely) or a Trademark (for things like logos).  This will put you in the legal high ground if you are concerned about a dispute as it marks the date when you asserted your IP rights.

I have actually done work on UpWork and elsewhere that was then made part of a Patent filing.  In the U.S. anyway, even though I had assigned the IP to the client, it is still required that I, as an inventor, had to be included on the Patent application.  But I also signed away my rights to the Patent.

If you are worried about your IP rights in other countries you are down a rabbit hole I have not been in...