Ownership and IP position
Draft for solicitor review. This page was drafted by Datum Forge from its own record, in plain English, for a solicitor to review before publication. It has not been reviewed by anyone legally qualified and it is not legal advice.
Last updated 19 October 2026.
This page describes the position; the design agreement and the build agreement set it.
The principle
You own your system. We own the software it runs on. The agreements are written to make both halves of that true, plainly.
The design document
Until the design fee is paid in full, Datum Forge owns the document and you have no licence to use it, including feeding it to an AI model to build from. On payment in full, all intellectual property in it passes to you automatically, with the right to act against anyone who copied it before then. You may build from it with anyone.
Your system
On handover, and on the terms the build agreement sets: the finished system runs on accounts in your name (hosting, database, email sending and the AI provider); your data and your content are yours; and anything built only for your business is yours, including the code written only for it. You can leave with all of it any day.
The software it runs on
The software your system runs on is Datum Forge’s: our pre-existing materials, methods, tools, know-how and the standard components we build systems from. It is licensed to you, and the licence for the version you have is permanent; it does not end if you decline care or leave. Care keeps it updated and supported. We keep the right to use the same software for other clients. The build agreement sets the terms, including any terms for the software’s code.
Third-party parts
Open-source components come under their own licences. Provider services (hosting, database, email sending, AI models) are used under their own terms, in your name.
Care
Taking or declining care changes nothing about what is yours or about your licence. Work we do under care comes on the same terms.
Confidentiality
Your data and your business information are yours. Our methods and pricing are ours. Neither side discloses the other’s.
Where the terms are
The design agreement exists as a working draft and goes to a solicitor before it is used. The build agreement, which carries the licence, account handover, hosting migration, what care covers and the terms for the software above, is being drafted. Until it is, this page describes the position we contract to and the agreements set it.