Deals and intellectual property course
Record Deals, Contracts, NDAs, Trademarks & Patents
Twenty-five weeks on the paperwork that decides who owns your career
The full paper trail of a creative career, taught in plain language over twenty-five modules: what makes a contract binding, how to read a record deal in risk order, where the money actually leaks in a royalty clause, what publishing costs you over twenty years, when an NDA is protection and when it is theatre, how to clear and register a name before you print merchandise, whether your invention is a patent question at all, and how to negotiate all of it calmly. Every module ends with something you produce, and every case study is a real-shaped situation you argue on paper.
Alander Pulliam · 25 modules · 950 minutes · Artists, songwriters, producers, authors, screenwriters, actors, directors, managers, label owners and anyone who has been handed a document and felt their stomach drop.
- Read any entertainment agreement in risk order and restate every defined term
- Model recoupment and effective royalty rates before responding to an offer
- Choose between administration, co-publishing and assignment with real arithmetic
- Draft a workable mutual NDA and a session split sheet unaided
- Clear, file, police and defend a name you actually trade under
- Triage an invention to the right protection instead of the fashionable one
- Prepare and deliver a negotiation with a written walk-away
- Leave behind a rights file another person could operate
Education, not legal advice. Nothing here creates a lawyer-client relationship. Laws differ by country and change; verify anything consequential with a qualified professional in your jurisdiction before you sign, file or enforce.
Week 1
1 assigned readingWhat a Contract Actually Is
Before the record deal, before the trademark, before anybody's lawyer: a contract is a set of promises a court will enforce. Learn the four parts and you stop being afraid of the paper.
- Name the elements that make an agreement enforceable
- Tell the difference between a term sheet, a deal memo and a contract
- Spot the moment a casual conversation became a binding promise
Before the deck
- Any agreement you have already signed · Your own files
Read one tonight, cover to cover. You will find at least one thing you did not know you agreed to.
Foundation
Offer, acceptance, consideration, intent
- Somebody offers. Somebody accepts. Both sides give something of value.
- Both sides intended legal consequences — that is what separates a deal from a favour.
- A text message can satisfy all four. That is the part people learn late.
Education, not legal advice. Jurisdictions differ.