Employer-Friendly | India | Standard Commercial – This is a specialized AI startup employment agreement that consolidates traditional employment terms with advanced technical and intellectual property protections tailored specifically for the artificial intelligence sector. The core agreement comprehensively governs standard workplace parameters—such as appointment, compensation, probation, and termination—while placing an extraordinarily heavy emphasis on data integrity and proprietary technology across forty-three distinct sections. It features rigorous, forward-looking provisions dedicated to “AI-Specific Intellectual Property,” the mandatory “Disclosure of Inventions,” and the explicit “Assignment of Intellectual Property,” ensuring that all foundational source code, models, algorithms, and training datasets created during employment belong solely to the company. Furthermore, the contract embeds specialized security and operational controls, including strict mandates on “Information Security,” “Access Credentials,” and “Company Systems and Monitoring,” which are reinforced post-employment by restrictive covenants and dedicated clauses for the “Continuing Protection of AI Know-How” to prevent critical algorithmic knowledge or proprietary machine learning techniques from leaking to competitors.
Table of Contents
1. Appointment
2. Position and Reporting 2
3. Duties and Responsibilities
4. Place of Employment
5. Working Hours
6. Probation
7. Compensation
8. Employee Benefits
9. Leave
10. Company Policies
11. Standards of Conduct
12. Outside Activities
13. Conflict of Interest
14. Company Property
15. Continuing Obligations
16. Definitions
17. Confidential Information
18. Employee Confidentiality Obligations
19. Exclusions from Confidential Information
20. Permitted Use and Disclosure
21. Return and Protection of Confidential Information
22. Ownership of Work Product
23. Assignment of Intellectual Property
24. Future Assistance
25. Moral Rights
26. Prior Intellectual Property
27. Disclosure of Inventions
28. Further Assurances
29. Survival
30. AI-Specific Intellectual Property
31. Continuing Obligations
32. Information Security
33. Company Systems and Monitoring
34. Access Credentials
35. Company Property
36. Disciplinary Matters
37. Termination of Employment
38. Employee Obligations upon Termination
39. Return and Deletion of Information
40. Continuing Protection of AI Know-How
41. Restrictive Covenants
42. Notices
43. Entire Agreement
44. Amendments
45. Assignment
46. Severability
47. Waiver
48. Governing Law
49. Dispute Resolution
50. Counterparts
ANNEXURE A – AI-SPECIFIC EMPLOYMENT OBLIGATIONS
1. AI Assets
2. AI-Specific Intellectual Property
3. Ownership of AI-Assisted Work Product
4. AI Models
5. Machine Learning Algorithms
6. Neural Network Architectures
7. Prompt Libraries and Prompt Engineering
8. Prompt Confidentiality
9. Training Data
10. Generated Datasets
11. Synthetic Data
12. Data Annotations
13. Feature Engineering
14. Fine-Tuning Methods
15. Model Weights
16. AI Pipelines
17. Evaluation Frameworks
18. Improvements to AI Assets
19. Future AI Assets
20. Ownership of AI Assets
21. AI Trade Secrets
22. AI-Specific Confidential Information
23. Restrictions on Use of AI Assets
24. Restrictions on External Artificial Intelligence Platforms
25. Reverse Engineering Restrictions
26. Open-Source AI Governance
27. AI Development Records
28. Responsible AI
29. Fairness Standards
30. Bias Testing
31. Safety Evaluations
32. Model Governance
33. Reporting of AI Security and Governance Incidents
34. Compliance with Applicable AI Requirements
35. Continuing Obligations