Quote Originally Posted by Eowyn Cwper View Post
This is incredibly helpful, and I'm amazed with how in-depth you made the posts while making sure they're accessible to laypeople.

I only have one question that surprisingly(?) wasn't asked here before as far as I could tell: I'm not American. Obviously I'm not asking you to know about French laws, but how relevant is my contract going to be for both internal and international commissions as a French mapmaker if I base it off your tutorial? Surely most of it should still be relevant?

Thanks again for your incredible work, I'll make sure to refer my acquaintances to this post if they ever need help with contracting and licensing!
De rien! The template I provided should work outside of the US. At my day job, I do a lot of work with international organizations and use fairly similar contract clauses. You'll want to select the appropriate governing law, which might be EU law, French law (at the national level), or possibly regional law. You'll also want to select the appropriate venue for any disputes, which would probably be the civil court most conveniently located for you. You may also want to include a clause on non-waiver of moral rights. I did a quick check and under French law, moral rights cannot be waived. However, if you're dealing with clients in other countries - especially corporate clients - it's possible they will try to apply the laws of their jurisdiction, which may or may not recognize moral rights and/or the ability to waive those rights. This is especially true if you have to negotiate out the governing law clause, which does happen frequently (one of my main workarounds when dealing with parties in other US states and parties outside of the US is to drop my insistence on a certain state's governing law).

Definitely check with a French lawyer for specific questions. France is a civil law system, whereas the US is a common law system, so I don't want to lead you astray due to my ignorance of French law.