Every right naturally comes with obligations attached. As a news network and platform for the licensing, sales and distribution of content, our success depends on two main factors: firstly, the requirement to offer customer satisfaction and a sustainable network model; and secondly, the obligation to honour both authors’ rights and edition ethics and standards.
As regards authors’ rights, one of our basic principles is to supply exclusive contents and ideas which belong to you, are possessed by you and which you are legally authorised to represent. See below an extract from our contract on this specific point.
« The CP (content producer) undertakes to create an entirely original piece of work (namely, one that is not the result of plagiarism, copying, adaptation, transformation, derivation or translation) and new (namely, that it is a previously unpublished work, regardless of medium). In addition, the CP declares that he or she is the sole author and holder of moral and material intellectual property rights, without restrictions of time or place. »
Last but not least: if we are to make this system work and sell your expertise, we would ask our members to be bound by a non-compete clause in respect of any clients to whom we introduce you. If we are bypassed every time that we find a new partner for our content producers, effectively there is no incentive for us to do this work. Consequently, we would call on you to list your current clients when you join the network so that we can avoid offering them your expertise. Similarly, we would ask members, both in terms of your contract and as a moral obligation, not to bypass us and enter into a direct relationship with any clients that we have found for you. We are bound by similar requirements and contracts in respect of our own clients.