Last edit February 8th, 2010 By Nextpush
From the Terms & Conditions;
“entrant (or entrant’s parent or legal guardian if an eligible minor) agrees to irrevocably assign and transfer to Sponsor all of his/her right, title and interest in and to his/her Entry, including all but not limited to all copyright, trademark and patent rights which he or she may have, in the United States and worldwide, therein”
I understand that Nokia would want to show the entries without paying some kind of royalty and such, but to take total ownership of all intellectual rights is a little extreme in my view. Maybe I’m wrong, anyone care to comment on this?
Open source it. Then you don’t have to worry about it.
by michael on February 8, 2010 at 9:16 pm
@michael
I’m not a lawyer, but according to the contest rules I don’t see how you can even open source it. How do you open source something that is now someone else’s property and you have no rights to?
by nextpush on February 9, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Hi guys,
These are typical Terms & Conditions that most companies would use in competitions like this. They aren’t specific to Nokia.
If you have any questions regarding the T&Cs, please feel free to add them as a comment below, or drop us an email over on the contact page.
thanks,
by mattbrawn on February 9, 2010 at 8:38 pm
Thanks for the reply Matt.
I think it’s great that Nokia is having this competition, but in my experience these T&C’s are a little stricter than usual. I’ll give a quick example.
From the Texas Instruments Stellaris 2010 Contest;
“The design remains the intellectual property of the Participant. All Participants who submit an Entry in the Contest agree to grant the Contest Administrator non-exclusive, assignable, full-publication rights of the Contest Project if they win. Software submitted with any Project Entry remains the property of the Participant”
http://www.luminarymicro.com/contest/design_stellaris_2010_contest_rules.html
by nextpush on February 9, 2010 at 10:41 pm
I’m sorry to say, but the current contest T&C’s are unworkable. And need to be changed to something similar to the Texas Instruments example I gave above. Under the current T&C’s, by submitting an entry, Nokia assumes all copyrights of that entry. Therefore, by mentioning any details of my entry on my website or any website, I would be committing copyright infringement against Nokia.
Again, I think it’s a great contest and looking forward to similar contest in the future.
by nextpush on February 10, 2010 at 12:58 am
Agreed. This contest is a great way for Nokia to skim good ideas off of students who think US$10,000 is a lot of money, but as an independent entrepreneur, there’s no way I can justify spending my time and resources coming up with and executing a cutting edge idea only to have it irrevocably lost in return for such little reward. This is a shame, and hopefully the Nokia Push organizers will fix this for next time. It is in Nokia’s best interest to encourage entries that are not only attention grabbing, but also the seeds of viable businesses that are strongly tied to Nokia products. Unfortunately, I’ll have to take my ideas and efforts elsewhere until the Terms & Conditions are fixed.
by CountDown on February 11, 2010 at 4:24 pm
Can someone from Nokia comment on why it is necessary to claim all rights, specifically trademark and patent rights?
by sevenbitbyte on February 12, 2010 at 5:28 pm
hi guys,
Here’s the official word from Nokia:
“Because we are asking for submissions based on derivations on copyright and proprietary material owned by Nokia, we believed that it was important than any derivations were owned by Nokia to avoid any questions about ownership in the future.”
If anyone’s got any more questions, please feel free to drop us a line over on the Contact page.
Thanks,
Matt Brawn
Community Manager
PUSH N900 Team
by mattbrawn on February 15, 2010 at 10:02 am
I don’t think the T&C’s are part of anything sinister. It’s probably the result of bunch of paranoid lawyers making sure they’re not going to get burned as a result of a public hacking contest. And I have seen similar policies elsewhere;
http://www.apple.com/legal/policies/ideas.html
Although a more suitable policy for the contest would have been nicer.
by nextpush on February 18, 2010 at 4:11 pm