Contractor IP Assignment Agreement Template
Four documents and two sheets that find who never signed an assignment, then rank the gap by whether their work still ships today.
Free download · No account needed
Contributor Register
[Company], Inc. — everyone who has ever touched the product
Covered means a signed document assigns this specific work. An NDA alone, or nothing signed at all, is a gap.
| Name | Role | Paperwork on File | Assignment Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | — | — |
| — | — | — | — |
| — | — | — | — |
A document on file is not a document that assigns anything
| Gap | An NDA only, an advisor agreement that excludes deliverables, or nothing signed at all |
| Covered | A signed document that actually assigns this specific work product to the company |
Most gaps are not missing paperwork. They are paperwork that was never an assignment in the first place.
Every IP assignment template online ends at the signature you have not collected yet: fill in a name, attach it to your next hire. None of them ask about the people already behind you: the early contractor paid in cash, the friend who built the first landing page, the advisor whose agreement never mentioned deliverables. Under federal copyright law, a contractor's work belongs to the company only if a signed, written assignment says so. Work made for hire covers just nine narrow categories, and most software, design and content falls outside every one of them.
Talbridge Health, a fictional telehealth scheduling startup, ran every agreement it could find through Contributor Register ahead of its Series A diligence. Of 14 people who had ever contributed code, design or written content, 9 had a real assignment on file. Five did not: two contractors signed only an NDA, two people did the work with no paperwork at all, and one advisor's own agreement explicitly excluded deliverables. The five gaps totaled $44,700 in historical payments nobody had checked against what was actually signed.
Gap Register ranks those five not by how long ago each person left, but by whether their specific work still ships today. $28,000 of the $44,700, 62.6 percent, sat behind a push-notification module and an onboarding icon set still running unchanged in production. Closing a gap needs more than a signature: a promise to pay only after work is already finished rests on past consideration, which courts will not enforce, so Gap Remediation Letters attaches a small new payment to every signature instead.
What's in the pack
Contributor Register
Everyone who has ever contributed code, design or content, with the paperwork on file and whether it actually assigns anything. A partner splitting ownership in a general partnership is a different question, covered by the partnership agreement pack instead.
Gap Register
Just the people missing a real assignment, ranked by whether their specific work is still live in the product today.
Gap Remediation Letters
Three formats for closing an old gap, each offering a new payment so the signature rests on a real exchange.
Employee Invention Assignment Addendum
A signed addendum for any employee whose offer letter never actually carried its own assignment clause.
Contractor IP Assignment Agreement
The work-for-hire and present-tense assignment language a contractor agreement needs, with a background IP carve-out.
Mutual NDA
Confidentiality for early conversations, with an explicit warning to replace it once real deliverables actually start.
How to use it
- 1
Open in River, or download it
Install the pack so the agent reads every agreement you already have on file, or take the blank Word and CSV files away and fill them in yourself.
- 2
Send every agreement, and who has none
Employee offer letters, contractor and advisor agreements, NDAs, plus a plain list of anyone who contributed informally with no paperwork at all.
- 3
Find the gaps, ranked by what still ships
Coverage gets checked against the actual assignment language, not just whether a document exists, then ranked by whether the work is still live.
- 4
Send the letters, with a payment attached
Each letter offers new consideration alongside the signature, so the assignment is a real exchange rather than a request resting on old work.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Yes. Four documents and two sheets download as Word and CSV files with no signup and no credit card. "Edit with AI" is a separate, optional path for founders who want the agent to build the register from their own agreements. The rest of the packs sit in the template library.
What format are the downloaded files?
Word documents (.docx) for the four templates and letters, and CSV (.csv) for Contributor Register and Gap Register, zipped together. They open natively in Word, Pages, Google Docs, Excel, Numbers and Sheets, with nothing to convert.
What does 'Edit with AI' actually do?
It creates a free River account and installs this exact pack as a private workspace. The agent reads whatever agreements you send, checks each one for an actual assignment clause rather than just a signature, and drafts the register and letters back to you.
Does a signed NDA count as an assignment?
No, and this is the single most common gap the register finds. An NDA protects secrets; it says nothing about who owns the work. A contractor file containing only an NDA gets marked as a gap here exactly like a file with no paperwork at all, because neither one actually assigns anything.
What if a former contractor refuses to sign?
It happens, though less often once a small payment is attached to the ask. A refusal does not erase the exposure; it just means the company knows about it rather than discovering it later. Record the refusal in Gap Register and decide, knowingly, whether to escalate, rebuild the work product, or accept the risk.
Do I still need a lawyer?
Yes, and this is not legal advice, particularly for the state-specific notice some invention assignment clauses require. What changes is what you hand them: a register showing exactly who is covered and who is not, rather than a vague sense that early paperwork might be incomplete somewhere.
How is this different from a standard contractor agreement template?
A blank template only helps with the next signature. This starts from everyone who has already contributed, ranks the gaps by whether their work still ships today, and drafts letters, with new consideration attached, that close the old ones. Reviewing a contract before signing is one job; tracking what you signed for its renewal date is another, which a contract obligation tracker handles instead.
Find out who never actually signed away what they built
Download the blank pack as Word and CSV files, or open it in River and have your own agreements checked, ranked and drafted into letters first.
Edit with AI