Contributor licence agreements nobody signed will not invent themselves in a dispute

Cyber Desk · Insight. Series: Digital disputes, as Indian courts actually see them.

Contributor licence agreements nobody signed will not invent themselves in a dispute.

A co-founder claims issue patches as personal IP. The project points at “our CLA.” Courts and counterparties will ask who signed what, when, and over which contributions. A CLA template in the repo folder is not a signed grant. Verbal “we all agreed” is not the paper trail. Ownership fights over patches turn on assignment and licence evidence — not on the hope that a missing CLA will appear when the dispute starts.

No signed CLA.

No invented ownership story.