Set clear licence rules for your digital products

They matter most when you are selling something customers can copy, share, download, reuse or access repeatedly, such as templates, online courses, design assets, software tools or member-only content. A standard store policy often does not deal properly with licence scope, account sharing, resale, commercial use or access revocation. Clear licence terms help set the rules at the point of sale and give you a stronger contractual position if a customer uses the product outside the permission you intended to give.

It usually covers who gets the licence, whether it is personal or business use, whether copying, editing, sublicensing or resale is allowed, and what happens if access is cancelled or misused. It can also address payment-linked access, intellectual property ownership, disclaimers about results or compatibility, and limits on support or updates. The exact wording depends on the product. Terms for a downloadable template, for example, often need different restrictions from terms for a subscription content library or software-based tool.

Helpful details include what the digital product is, how customers receive it, whether access is one-off or recurring, whether files can be downloaded, and whether customers can use the product commercially. We also need to know if you sell through your own website, a marketplace, a member portal or an app. If there are different licence tiers, team access, affiliate sales or bundled offers, that can change the drafting as well because the terms need to match the actual way your product is sold and used.

Off-the-shelf wording can help you see the usual structure, but it may not deal with the facts that make your arrangement different. However, it often stays too generic for the way digital products are actually sold. Many templates do not clearly deal with account sharing, reuse rights, commercial exploitation, subscription access, or what happens after breach or cancellation. That can leave gaps if a customer republishes your content, shares login access or argues they bought broader rights than you intended. Tailored terms are useful where your product has specific access rules, layered permissions or a business model that is not captured by a basic download template.

Once you send through your current terms or the key details of your product, a lawyer reviews the commercial setup and prepares draft wording or mark-ups for the licence document. You will usually be asked practical questions about access, restrictions, pricing structure and customer use cases so the clauses reflect the real offer. After you receive the draft, you can provide comments and requested changes. This service is for the licence terms document itself, rather than implementation on your platform or broader legal support across all site documents.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Digital Product Licence Terms service, pricing starts from $900.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.