What do you bring that must be protected?
Background IP: methodologies, models, software, templates, and data you owned before the contract. The pack should define it, carve it out of any assignment, and licence it back to the buyer only as far as delivery requires. Where the definition is missing or circular (“all IP used in performance”) your pre-existing assets are inside the grant until counsel says otherwise. List background assets in the response schedules the pack provides, and do not rely on a general understanding.
Who owns what the contract creates?
Whatever the grant says. Commonwealth and state packs vary: some assign foreground IP to the buyer with a licence back to the supplier; some leave ownership with the supplier and take a broad licence; some split by asset class: reports to the buyer, tools to the supplier. There is no universal government-ownership rule, in either direction. Moral rights consents, third-party IP warranties, and open-source obligations ride in the same clauses; read them as part of the grant, not as boilerplate.
What does the licence actually permit?
| Asset | Right granted | Use case it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Background methodology | Licence to buyer for contract purpose, no sublicensing | Delivery only; buyer cannot hand it to your replacement |
| Reports and deliverables | Assignment or broad licence including publication | Buyer may publish, share with parliament, reuse on later procurements |
| Tools and models built in delivery | Depends entirely on the grant: the contested row | Reuse on other clients, product development, competitive advantage |
Confidentiality is adjacent, not identical: it protects disclosure, not ownership. A confidentiality clause does not cure an assignment you should not have signed.
What does this mean for the bid/no-bid call?
If the deliverable is your product (models, platforms, methods you sell repeatedly) an assignment-heavy grant prices the loss of the asset, not just the delivery hours. That price is usually unpayable, which makes the call no-bid or qualify-with-departure before pricing. The flag that sent you here is on red flags in an RFT. IT services scopes add their own transition and exit IP questions; see IT managed services tenders. Where the grant would change the call, that is named legal review with a date.