That sponsorship contract loophole cost me $2,000 in free work

I was doing brand deals for about 8 months before I caught it. A cosmetics company sent me a contract last spring with a clause that said they owned the content forever, even if the deal fell through. I almost signed it, but my friend who is a lawyer read it over coffee and spotted the issue. She told me this is common in influencer agreements where brands try to grab perpetual rights without paying for them. Now I check every contract for that wording and I ask for a kill fee clause too. Has anyone else found sneaky terms buried in their partnership papers?

2 comments

2 Comments

abbyg145d ago

Wait, is it standard to have your lawyer friend just casually spot a loophole over coffee? I mean good catch, but that's not really a loophole. That's just a bad contract term you almost signed. A loophole would be like if you found a way to reuse the same content for a competitor's campaign without breaking your exclusivity clause. That perpetual rights stuff is greedy but it's right there in plain English. Brands know exactly what they're doing when they write that in. It's not hidden, it's just buried in the fine print hoping you'll skim past it.

margaret_kelly555d ago

Your brain's just working overtime on that one, isn't it? I mean you're not wrong, calling it a loophole is a stretch, but I'd probably still brag about it over coffee because I'm lazy like that. My own lawyer friend once caught a "non-compete" clause that basically said I couldn't work for any brand that sold anything even remotely similar for two years, which is bananas. I didn't even notice it because I was too busy staring at the payment section like a goof. So yeah, sometimes spotting a bad term feels like a magic trick, but it's really just having a friend who reads slow enough to catch the nonsense. Brands definitely know what they're doing, they're just betting you'll sign before your eyes glaze over.