Signing example
Sign an ip assignment agreement online
An IP assignment is signed at the start of employment and read for the first time years later, usually when somebody asks what the employee brought with them. This envelope makes the prior inventions schedule a field the employee has to fill, puts initials on the assignment clause and the moral rights consent, and sits behind an access code shared out of band.
The document itself is written out in full on its own page:read the wording there. This page is only about signing it.
Who signs what
- Isabel Marchetti, the employee, signs first
- Initials on page 1 and page 2 · Prior inventions schedule, typed, or the word none · Signature and stamped date on page 3 · Verified by access code
- For Wavelength Instruments Pty Ltd, the company secretary
- Signature block: Name, Title, Company, Date · Email link
The signing journey
Step 1
Six fields, and one of them decides ownership
The employee gets initials at the foot of page 1 and page 2, a text field for the prior inventions schedule, a signature and a date on page 3. The company secretary gets a signature block. Sign in order is on, employee first.
Step 2
An access code, given in person
The employee carries an access code, at least four characters, never returned by the API. It was handed over at the induction rather than emailed.
Step 3
The schedule is a field, not a blank line
The prior inventions box has to hold something before the envelope can be submitted, and the document asks for the word none if there is nothing to list.
Step 4
One drawing, three marks
Isabel drew once and the portal filled both initials spots and the page 3 signature from that drawing. The date beside her signature printed as Sep 12, 2026 from the moment she submitted, because a date field has no box to type into.
Step 5
The company secretary countersigns
Invited after the employee's signature landed, the secretary opened a copy carrying the initials and the schedule. The block printed the company name in capitals over four lines.
Every field, and who fills it
Six fields, and one of them decides what the company does not own. The prior inventions box has to hold a value before the envelope can be submitted, and the document asks for the word none where there is nothing to list, so the schedule can never be read two ways in five years' time. Initials mark page one, which assigns, and page two, which carves out and consents. A signature and a date close page three and the company secretary's block carries Name, Title, Company and Date. Nothing was pre-filled: the preparation screen offers a field label and a Required switch and no value box at all.
How to adapt this envelope
An employee with several prior inventions needs room, so give the schedule a wider field or one box per row, since a value shrinks only to four points before it stops being readable. A company that executes through two officers adds a second company side recipient with a block of its own. And a later assignment for one named patent is always its own envelope, because this one cannot be reopened once it has been sent.
Why the signed copy matters years later
An assignment is produced during due diligence, during a patent filing and during an argument about who owns a side project. A certified PDF carrying the schedule in the employee's own typing, initials on the two operative pages, an access code entry on the certificate and a hash chained event log answers all three from one file.
What makes this signing flow work
The prior inventions schedule cannot be skipped
The single most common defect in a signed assignment is an empty schedule that nobody can interpret. Making it a required text field, and asking for the word none, turns an ambiguity into a recorded answer that both sides can rely on.
Initials sit on the two clauses that matter most
Page 1 carries the assignment itself and page 2 carries the schedule and the moral rights consent. Marking both leaves the employee's initials on the clause that transfers ownership and on the consent that cannot be assigned, hashed to the same signature image.
A moral rights consent should look consented to
Moral rights cannot be assigned, only consented to, and a consent buried in a wall of text is the kind that gets argued about. The document lists exactly what is consented to in a table, on the page the employee initials.
Questions people ask
What goes in the prior inventions box?
Anything the employee made before starting that should stay theirs: a patent in their own name, a personal library they still maintain, a design licensed elsewhere. If there is nothing, the document asks for the word none, so the record is explicit rather than blank.
Does the employee keep anything they made before joining?
Whatever is written into the prior inventions box, and only that. Clause two excludes work made entirely in the employee's own time, with their own equipment, unrelated to the business, and the schedule is where those items are named. An empty box would be ambiguous, which is why the document asks for the word none.
Why an access code rather than an emailed one?
The employee was in the building for the induction, so the code was handed over there. That makes possession of the emailed link insufficient on its own, and the certificate prints Email link + access code beside the name rather than a bare click.
Does the company secretary sign at the induction too?
Usually later the same week. The employee goes first and the secretary's invitation appears only when that signature lands, so the company countersigns an assignment that has already been accepted. The assignment takes its date from the later of the two stamps.
What if the employee will not sign?
They can press Decline with a reason, which moves the envelope to declined, stops any further stamping and emails the sender that reason. Nothing is assigned by an unsigned document, and a revised version goes out as a fresh envelope.
What is the deadline on the induction link?
The envelope stops working thirty days after it was created, a window nothing in the app can move, after which the link reports that the signing request has expired. A new starter who misses it gets a fresh envelope. Inside the window a Resend issues a new link, retires the old one and clears any lockout.
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Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked .