An IP assignment agreement is a contract that transfers ownership of intellectual property, code, designs, inventions, created by a founder, employee, or contractor, to the company itself, rather than leaving it owned by the individual who created it.
Without one, work an employee or contractor does can legally remain their own personal property, which becomes a real problem the moment a company tries to raise money or get acquired and a diligence team asks who actually owns the core technology.
This is one of the more common gaps found late: a founding engineer or an early contractor who never signed a proper assignment, sometimes because the work happened before the company was even incorporated. Getting every contributor's assignment signed at the time the work happens is far cheaper than tracking someone down for a signature years later during a deal.
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