From concept to Golden Sample — with full IP protection
Take your product from idea to production-ready sample with a comprehensive development agreement. Our guided process creates a bilingual agreement that protects your intellectual property, structures milestone payments, and ensures you receive all deliverables needed to move to manufacturing.
A Product Development Agreement (PDA) is a comprehensive contract that governs the entire process of taking a product from concept to production-ready Golden Sample. Unlike a Manufacturing Agreement which covers ongoing production, a PDA focuses on the engineering and design phase — the NRE (Non-Recurring Engineering) work that must happen before you can manufacture at scale. This includes everything from initial design, prototyping, tooling development (if applicable), firmware/software development, compliance testing, and final Golden Sample approval. The agreement ensures you own all intellectual property created during development and receive all the source files, documentation, and samples needed to manufacture the product with any factory you choose.
The Product Development Agreement comes after your initial NNN Agreement and before a Manufacturing Agreement. Use it when you've identified a development partner and are ready to invest in engineering and tooling. This is the critical phase where IP is created — getting the agreement right here protects you from the common scenario where a factory owns your designs because you never formally assigned the IP. Sign this agreement before making any NRE payments or sharing detailed specifications beyond what was covered by your NNN.
Should be signed first to protect your concept during initial discussions before development begins.
Sign this after Golden Sample approval to govern ongoing production orders and pricing.
Register your trademark before development completes to prevent the factory from registering your brand.
Answer guided questions about your product category, development milestones, IP ownership, and deliverables. We customize the agreement to your specific project type.
Your answers are transformed into a comprehensive bilingual agreement with proper IP assignment, milestone payments, and Golden Sample acceptance criteria.
Check the IP risk assessment, review all terms, and download your professionally formatted PDF ready for signing.
No law degree required. We promise.
Not sure what you're getting? Take a look at a sample Product Development Agreement before you start. See exactly how your finished document will look.
“We spent months developing a product with a factory only to discover they owned all the design files. This agreement would have prevented that nightmare. Now we use it for every new project.”
Jason Lee
Hardware Startup Founder
“The milestone payment structure was exactly what we needed. We could see progress at each stage and knew exactly what we were paying for. The IP risk assessment feature is brilliant.”
Rachel Martinez
Product Development Manager