Style guide — CLA

A CLA transfers specific intellectual property rights from a contributor to the project. The canonical text is governed by factory-release-engineering — this template is for drafting or explaining one, not for executing one.

A Contributor License Agreement (LEGAL-CLA genre) is an agreement between a project and a contributor that grants the project the rights it needs to use, modify, and redistribute the contributor's work. A CLA is not a copyright transfer — the contributor retains copyright and grants a license. Every CLA executed under this platform routes through factory-release-engineering governance before it binds any party. This article is the human-facing standard; the machine-readable counterpart lives in service-disclosure/templates/cla.toml.

[edit]When to use this template

Use this template when:

• An open-source project in pointsav-monorepo accepts external contributions and needs a contribution framework.
• A contributor's rights need to be explicit to satisfy a downstream licensing requirement.
• A governance review of an existing CLA is needed for comparison against the canonical text.

The canonical CLA text is maintained by factory-release-engineering. Do not draft a CLA for execution without routing it through governance review.

[edit]Structure

The template requires a header block and five sections:

Header block (before any heading):

Agreement:   Contributor License Agreement — <project name>
Contributor: <full legal name or entity name>

Section	Purpose
Definitions	Three defined terms: Contribution (what the contributor submits), Project (what they contribute to), Contributor (who is agreeing). Defined exactly once.
Grant of copyright license	The specific copyright rights the Contributor grants the Project. Minimum: reproduce, prepare derivative works, publicly display, publicly perform, distribute.
Grant of patent license	Any patent rights the Contributor holds that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution, granted to the Project. Must include a defensive-termination clause: if the Contributor initiates patent litigation against the Project based on the Contribution, the patent license terminates.
Representations	The Contributor's representations that they have the right to make the Contribution — original authorship, employer consent where applicable, no conflicting agreements. Must be concrete, not vague ("I believe I have the right" is not sufficient).
Scope	What the agreement covers and what it explicitly does not — for example, that the Contributor retains copyright; that the agreement does not transfer moral rights in jurisdictions where these are inalienable.

[edit]Register and tone

Legal-plain. Defined terms are capitalised. Active voice where possible. Representations must be stated precisely — vague claims reduce enforceability and create ambiguity about what the Contributor actually represents.

[edit]See also

• Style Guide — Contract
• Style Guide — License Explainer
• Style Guide — Terms of Use
• Language Protocol Substrate