(Archived) Creative ownership

[Pax Rodentia 0]

Hello,

I've been using Skitch for a couple of years, and find it great and useful. So much that I signed up for a subscription when it was not part of the Evernote service. In our specific case, I use it to post series of private design templates for my clients to review. I just found out a very disturbing statement in the Skitch licensing agreement. This statement is as follows:

"Furthermore, by posting any Submission on the Service, submitting information to us, or in responding to questionnaires, you grant us a perpetual, non-exclusive, fully paid, royalty-free, irrevocable, sublicenseable, worldwide license and right to display, use, perform, reproduce, modify, distribute and create derivative works of the Submission or information submitted in any media, software, or technology of any kind now existing or developed in the future."

The evernote terms, however are VERY different and underline the fact that the submitted work is not granted creative rights to the material:

"Except for the limited license and other rights granted in these Terms of Service, you retain all of the rights you had in your Content before you submitted it; unless you elect to enable others to view or have access to the Content you submit to the Service, no one else should see your Content without your consent. Of course, if you do elect to publish and share any portion of your Content by placing it into one or more Shared Notebooks, then, in doing so, you are enabling each of those permitted users of the Evernote Service access to use, display, perform, distribute and modify your Content (subject to any understandings or agreements you and such users may work out without Evernote’s involvement)."

As a design and communications firm whose work is paid to provide custom design and branding work for clients, I have to ask which policy you're applying, and if that makes you truly owners of the work that I designed for a private company. If the Skitch policy is the favored one, that would mean I have to immediately stop using Skitch as it'd violate a dozen NDA and likely put my own clients agreements in jeopardy.

Thank you for clarifying,

Stephan Tran

[heather 604]

Our Legal team is at this moment working to amend the Skitch terms to be more Evernote friendly.

[Pax Rodentia 0]

Thanks for the clarification, Heather. In terms of retroactivity, what of all the designs that were posted these past 2 years? Under what terms will they fall?

[heather 604]

Current terms.