Intellectual property rights to an AI solution determine who may use, modify and further provide the result. For projects financed from public funds, this is a fundamental question, because the provider requires the recipient to hold sufficient rights to the acquired asset throughout the entire sustainability period. In the contract with the supplier, three things therefore need to be clearly resolved: the scope of the licence or the transfer of rights to the source code, the right to make modifications including the option to change supplier, and the fate of the trained model and the data that went into it. If the supplier retains exclusive rights and the company receives only a time-limited licence, there is a risk that once it expires the company will not be able to operate the solution, and the sustainability of the project cannot be demonstrated.
See also: Ownership of the website and source code, Sustainability of an AI project, Contract with a marketing agency.
