ABSTRACT
Copyrights and other IP may be the heart of our work, but a contract is the engine that drives the deal. Without a contract to define the duties and obligations of each party, a collaboration can quickly spiral out of control, ending up in a thicket of thorny legal problems. Understanding legal mumbo-jumbo can be tricky, but it really helps if we imagine how we would be affected by each clause. An express contract is one where all the terms are stated, as are the contract formation steps of offer, acceptance, and consideration. A proposal is merely an offer to enter into a contract. A deal memo is a short memorandum outlining the major deal points of a contract. Deal points are those terms that everyone must agree on before negotiating the rest of a contract.
