Sue Me Sue You Blues

I've commented before on the issue of 3rd party infringement warranties in contracts with our clients, particularly our ad agency partners. Essentially, while we say that our work will be original we can never agree to any language that states our work won't infringe on the rights of a 3rd party because that statement leaves us open to frivolous law suits that could potentially put us out of business. Also, agreeing to this means we take on all of the risk rather than sharing it in a fair manner with the agency we're working for. Now comes the news a couple of weeks ago that Omnicom is now enforcing a sequential liability clause in its contracts with vendors which says that even though our contract is with the agency, if they don't get paid by their clients, we don't get paid. Needless to say this scenario is creating an uproar in the production community. Fortunately, we have organizations such as the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA), of which Firstborn is a member, to push back on these unfair edicts. The net effect of the Omnicom mishigoss could be that companies who are producing great work will refuse to work with Omnicom and the slack will be taken up by crappy companies who will sign to anything and as a result, the quality of production will go in the toilet.