John Buckby is an intellectual property lawyer based in Nottingham, and specialises in helping creative businesses.  Before becoming a solicitor, John established and ran a successful independent record label for 8 years, Winding Road Records.  So as well as his legal experience, John has a great deal of practical experience of negotiating contracts in the UK and overseas with companies such as Ministry of Sound, Universal, EMI and others.John will be presenting a talk on what to look out for in creative industries, so whether you are involved in design, media, music, scriptwriting, art, consultancy, photography, or another creative business, this will be a useful introduction to the legal and commercial side of creativity.In this session, John will discuss:

• what a contract is, and the different forms a contract can take
• in what circumstances you should use a contract
• what happens if you don’t have a written contract in place and something goes wrong
• how contracts are structured, the types of clauses included
• demystifying legal language of contracts
• how to deal with intellectual property in contracts
• dealing with money in contracts – advances, royalties, fees, payment terms
• the contractual clauses that creative businesses should include in a contract
• key things to beware of
• how to negotiate the terms of a contract
• what to do if a contract is breached

As well as a general discussion, John will talk through some examples of creative industries contracts, to provide some concrete examples on the above.  There will also be a Q&A session in which you can put your questions to John about creative business contracts and intellectual property law issues.