VCCP Search and the Intellectual Property Rights Debate

 Phew! Quite a storm over this one. VCCP Search’s claim to be the first agency to ensure Intellectual Property rights contractually vest with their clients on paid search accounts has caused quite a debate. Most of the responses have been along the lines of “Cheeky beggars! We’ve been doing that for ages!”.

Well, if that’s the case - great news! It means that never again will there be any issues for a client moving a Google account between agencies or from an agency to an in-house team. And it means that suddenly, no agency has any problem whatsoever with the issue of IP rights to account structure, keywords, ad copy etc. Is that really the case? I’m not so sure.

Firstly let’s clarify what this is all about. There have been lots of blog posts about this over the weekend, many of which seem to have missed the point of the Marketing Week article completely.  This is not about providing access or logins to a client’s Google accounts or allowing a client to retain their data in some form. Lots of agencies, certainly all the good ones, do that and have done for some time.

This is about what happens at the point of change – when a client wants to change agency or move a Google account in house. It’s about the contractual relationship. The fact is that contractually the Intellectual Property rights to a clients Google account vest with the agency, in the majority of cases. Yes, there are probably some clients who have been wise enough to negotiate on this clause but in general the power lies with the agency. For years, the point of view of media and search agencies can be summed up as; why should an account in which their team has invested a great deal of effort, and which might have some unique IP in terms of structure or strategy, simply be passed on in its entirety to a new partner?

But that’s what we’re proposing should be the case. If a client also bills Google directly, rather than via the agency then for the first time the advertiser is in complete control. Their account, in which they have invested a great deal of money, is future proof.

As some commentators have pointed out, the issue about what is best practice when an account is being moved from one agency to another is still being debated, without many signs of consensus so far on anything but the most basic points. If everyone already has this set up with their clients then why is this the case? If everyone already had this set up, then moving accounts should be a complete non-issue. But it’s not.

Of course many agencies will be professional enough to go through a smooth handover process with the new agency. That’s not up for debate. But others won’t and it shouldn’t be a case of advertisers having to rely on luck here because when a decision is made to make a move, the relationship may have broken down and in these cases both parties have to refer to the letter of the contract.

If there are other agencies out there with this set up then that’s great. It’s not about whether VCCP Search is the first agency to do this and unfortunately Norris McWhirter was unavailable to check the contracts of every search agency in the UK to secure our lasting fame in the Guinness Book of Really Obscure Business to Business Records.

But what this debate has demonstrated is that it’s high time for some clarity on this issue and if everyone lines up on the same side then it will a major issue put to bed and a step forward for the industry. The problem is that this type of question brings out cries of outrage in public with claims that a similar policy in place for eons. But in private, the resistance towards handing over years of hard work will still be there and unless it’s in the contract the claims will be nothing more than empty rhetoric.

Paul Mead, MD