Limited liability Statements

[#1]

As a design professional my design agreements always include a limited liability statement. How would this be handled in the world of UpWork?

[#2]

What does your statement say?

[#3 · Accepted solution]

re: "As a design professional my design agreements always include a limited liability statement. How would this be handled in the world of UpWork?"

Christopher:

This is a very simple matter:

Upwork DOES ALLOW you to set up any kind of additional agreements and contracts you want with clients. As long as payment goes through Upwork.

So if you want to set up a limited liability agreement with contracts, this is 100% allowed.

Beyond that, it has nothing to do with Upwork. If you want to enforce or adhere to your own agreements that you set up separately from Upwork's default agreements, you are welcome to do so. Upwork will not be involved.

[#4]

As you can see from moderator Valeria K's response in the following thread on Dec. 9, 2016...

https://community.upwork.com/t5/Clients/Copyright-and-content-ownership/td-p/279104

...Upwork's User Agreement used to require immediate transfer of all IP rights to the client upon payment to the freelancer, follows:

"Upon Freelancer’s receipt of full payment from Client, the Work Product, including without limitation all Intellectual Property Rights in the Work Product, will be the sole and exclusive property of Client, and Client will be deemed to be the author thereof."

That may no longer be the case.

[#5]

Will:

Upwork's default agreement between clients and contractors does indeed state that ownership of work product belongs to the client who pays for the work.

But Upworks TOS has consistently pointed out that clients and freelancers may establish their own contracts which supercede Upwork's default agreement.

So if a freelancer and client want to agree otherwise, they are indeed allowed to establish their own agreement about ownership of the work product.

[#6]

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@Preston H wrote:

But Upworks TOS has consistently pointed out that clients and freelancers may establish their own contracts which supercede Upwork's default agreement.

So if a freelancer and client want to agree otherwise, they are indeed allowed to establish their own agreement about ownership of the work product.

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Correct, plus  the OP asked about limited liability statements, which has absolutely nothing to do with the transfer of intellectual property rights.