As a general rule must a contract be in writing in order to be enforceable If your answer is no are there exceptions to the general rule
As a general rule must a contract be in writing in order to be enforceable If your answer is no are there exceptions to the general rule
Contracts and Negotiations Assignment
Read the documents as instructed below and answer the ten questions in red below. Submit
your answers in an email to me, due by noon on Monday October 5:
Read UC Managing Relationships – Contracts and the Media. Review the outline – CCM
Contracts and Negotiation Notes. Note that in the outline, a legally enforceable contract is
described as requiring four elements, while in the Managing Relationships chapter, it is
described as requiring three elements (with legal capacity and lawful purpose thought of as
defenses rather than as affirmative elements). Answer the following questions based on either
presentation (both forms of analysis eventually get you to the same place):
Q #1 – What is a contract? What are the essential components of a contract? Explain each one.
Q #2 – What elements must a letter must a letter contain in order to serve as a legally enforceable
contract?
Q #3 – As a general rule, must a contract be in writing in order to be enforceable? If your answer
is no, are there exceptions to the general rule? What are they?
Q #4 – What are the sources of contract law?
Q #5 – What are the remedies for breach of contract?
Read 2109 Negotiation Presentation and answer the following questions:
Q #6 – List and describe the two styles of negotiation at opposite ends of the collaboration
spectrum.
Q #7 – What is the focus of the first stage of any successful negotiation? Why is that so?
Q #8 – Assume you are the Senior Acquisitions Editor for Vacuous Publishing Company. The
author of your best-selling non-fiction interactive CD-ROM, The One Second Manager, has a
proposal for another hot management multimedia title but wants a non-refundable $500,000
signing bonus as a key component of any contract to publish this work. You suspect, without
knowing, that the demand has more to do with the author’s ego needs than with her financial
needs. In any event, your preliminary profit and loss work ups reveal that the highest you could
go would be $250,000.
Describe your approach to this negotiation, including both A) a description of the negotiating
style you would employ and why you selected that approach, and B) your opening offer and
rationale for that offer.
Reinforcement Questions (for material covered in prior weeks):
Q #9 – Assume that you are the creative director for Big Media, Inc. Your product development
folks have come up with a plan to develop a new series of training films. You have decided to
outsource the work to a freelancer. A) What must Big Media do vis a vis the freelancer in order
to ensure that Big Media ends up with the greatest possible rights in the final work product? B)
Is the answer different if the project is assigned to an employee of Big Media? If so, how?
Q #10 – Explain, compare, and contrast fair use of trademarks as opposed to fair use of
copyrighted works.
