Selling or closing a civil practice
Civil engineering firm for sale: what happens to the scheme archive
Updated
An archive of completed schemes is an asset a buyer of the practice may never value. It can be licensed separately, and the practice keeps the copyright when it does.
Read the appointments before the sale
A buyer of the practice inherits whatever rights the practice holds, and no more. Copyright in the drawings passes only in a signed writing (17 U.S.C. 204(a); in the UK, an assignment signed by or on behalf of the assignor), so the sale agreement should say what happens to the archive, and each scheme's appointment says whether the practice held the copyright to begin with.
Three ways the archive leaves
- While the practice trades
- A cleaned set of the practice's own schemes is licensed and the practice keeps the drawings and the business.
- As the practice closes
- Its directors, or an administrator appointed to it, license the schemes during the wind-down.
- Through a partner
- If a partner is better placed to take the schemes, we make the introduction once the practice agrees in writing.
What to strip first
Client names, landowner details and anything a federal data clause covers come out before a buyer sees a sample. Then describe the archive in the form on the home page and we reply in writing.