A client wants to reuse your frameworks.
Or a platform wants to train a tool on your summaries.
That is a licensing decision. The counterparty is the licensee: the client or platform, and the person who signs. The date is the signing of the contract or renewal, inside the next 90 days.
The license is decided when the contract is signed. After that, the work is already delivered.
When you finish this, you will hold one dated page. It names the method behind the work, where it was delivered and on what terms, and who has asked to reuse it.
The licensee does not want the finished page. The licensee wants the judgment that chose what went on it. Until that judgment is documented as yours, there is nothing on paper to put license terms on.
On September 29, 2026, a federal appeals court found editors' choices original: which issue to cover, what to include, how to state it concisely. Your frameworks run on the same kind of judgment. Theirs was on record. Yours is not, yet.
If that reads as vindication, keep it cold. The ruling is a mechanism. Write the page before the signing date.
The belief that stops you
"Once I deliver it, it is theirs."
The contract decides that. Specifically, its clause on ownership and reuse. A contract can say nothing at all.
None of this is a personal failing. Nobody teaches it. Block 65 minutes before the signing date.
The steps
The examples below are illustrations, not clients.
Step 1. Name the request and the date. (10 minutes)
Who asked. For which work. For what use: internal reuse, resale, or tool training. Then the date the contract is signed.
Example: "Client's operations lead. Onboarding framework. Internal tool training. Renewal signs January 15."
Step 2. List the works. (15 minutes)
Each framework, summary set, or curated collection. The date each was first delivered, and to whom.
Example: "Onboarding framework, first delivered March 2025."
Step 3. Record the judgment in each. (20 minutes)
One sentence each. What you selected, and from what source. What you condensed. Whether the result stands on its own without the source.
Example: "Selected 6 of 40 regulatory requirements. Condensed each to one decision. Usable without the regulation in hand."
The first two questions follow what the court reported about the headnote editors' choices. They are a record, not a legal opinion.
See the difference? "I built a framework" describes a file. Selection, condensing, and standing alone describe a method.
Step 4. Record the current terms. (10 minutes)
For each delivery, find the clause on ownership and reuse. Write the section number. If there is none, write "silent."
Step 5. Record the market. (5 minutes)
Every request to reuse the work. From whom. On what date.
Step 6. File and date the page. (5 minutes)
Somewhere you control. Not the client's shared drive.
Translation: the deliverable is what the client paid for. The method is what the licensee is asking for.
The example: the court read the editors' judgment
On September 29, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit decided Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence, No. 25-2153 (opinion; Ballard Spahr; National Law Review).
It affirmed. The Westlaw headnotes at issue are copyrightable. ROSS's use of them to train an AI legal-research tool was not fair use. The ruling came on an interlocutory appeal from partial summary judgment. The case returns to the federal trial court in Delaware.
The court found the editors' work original. Per Ballard Spahr's account of the opinion, they decided which legal issue each headnote would cover. They also decided what facts and reasoning to include, and how to state the point accurately and concisely.
One factor leaned slightly toward ROSS. Headnotes summarize opinions, so they are more factual. The court still found the headnotes original.
It found the use highly commercial and only minimally transformative.
It found harm to Westlaw's existing market. It also found harm to a developing market for licensing headnotes as AI training data.
That is why Step 5 exists. The court counted a licensing market in the owner's favor.
Translation: a request to reuse your work is market evidence. Undated, it is a favor.
The scope is narrow. Commentators note the holding is limited to non-generative AI that returns existing passages. It does not decide generative AI training.
Authors Alliance, an amicus for ROSS, disputes the court's merger analysis.
Whether any of this reaches your own work is a question for counsel. The page gives counsel something to read.
Your template
Copy this. Fill it in before the signing date.
METHOD RECORD | Dated: ________ Licensee (the person who signs): ____________ Contract signing date: ____________ Requested use (reuse, resale, tool training): ____________ Work 1: ______________________________ First delivered (date, to whom): __________ What I selected, and from what: __________ What I condensed: ________________________ Stands alone without the source (yes/no): ___ Ownership and reuse clause (section, or "silent"): ______ Work 2: ______________________________ First delivered (date, to whom): __________ What I selected, and from what: __________ What I condensed: ________________________ Stands alone without the source (yes/no): ___ Ownership and reuse clause (section, or "silent"): ______ Reuse requests received (from whom, date): ______________ Question for counsel (one line): _________________________
What the record does not do
This page records the asset, your claim to it, and who has asked for it.
It does not set the license fee. It does not say whether a flat or usage-based structure fits.
Documentation is not valuation. You can take a box of receipts to your accountant. Without her expertise, you have a box of paper.
The fee comes only from valuing the documented record of what the method has produced for the buyers who already use it.
Before the licensee signs this quarter: the method on record as yours, and the license fee valued from that record, not the deliverable price.