It's the first real question a creator asks about audience collaboration, and it's the right one: if I open a Board and a fan pitches something I end up using, who owns it? The worry underneath is that accepting outside ideas quietly fractures your authorship — that the more you use, the less the world is fully yours. On The Board, that isn't how it works, and the reason is worth understanding in detail, because it's the foundation the rest of your confidence rests on.
The short answer is that you keep your world, contributors keep whatever rights they had in their own idea, and the bridge between the two is a license plus credit — not a transfer of ownership. This piece unpacks what that actually means: what a contributor grants when they pitch, what they keep, and why credit is the mechanism that lets a creator accept ideas without accreting co-owners. It's the companion to the bigger picture in opening your world without losing it.
A pitch grants a license, not a piece of your story
When a contributor submits to a Board, they aren't handing you a deed and they aren't keeping a leash. Under the Board Participation Terms, submitting grants you and CanonBoard a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, adapt, and build on the idea — in the story and in anything that follows from it. A license is permission to use, and that's exactly what a creator needs: the freedom to take an idea and make it part of the world without asking again or owing anything for the privilege.
The contributor, for their part, keeps whatever rights they had in their own underlying idea. They're granting the freedom to use it, not signing it away, and — just as importantly — they're not being granted any slice of your work in return. This is the distinction that resolves the ownership fear: a license flows one direction (permission to you), and ownership of the resulting story stays where it started (with you). Nothing about a pitch makes the contributor a part-owner of your canon.
Credit is how a contribution is acknowledged — and where it ends
So what does a contributor actually get? Credit. When you canonize a pitch, CanonBoard keeps the contributor's name with it through the Board's attribution system, so the people who helped shape a world are visibly acknowledged for it. That acknowledgment is meaningful — it's a real, lasting record of authorship-of-an-idea — and it is also, by design, the whole of what canonization confers.
The terms are deliberate that credit is where the relationship ends: canonizing does not create ownership, employment, partnership, or any compensation obligation beyond that credit. This matters because 'credit' in other contexts sometimes implies a foot in the door toward more. On The Board it doesn't. Credit is the complete and final acknowledgment, agreed to by everyone before they pitch. We cover why that credit-only line is drawn so firmly, and what it protects, in credit, not compensation.
Why this keeps your world unambiguously yours
Put the two halves together and the ownership picture is clean. Contributors grant you permission to use their ideas; you owe them credit and nothing more; ownership of everything you build stays yours. There's no accumulation of co-owners as your Board grows, no point at which using enough pitches turns your world into a shared asset, and no path by which a contributor converts credit into a claim on the story. The more you canonize, the more people are credited — and the world remains, start to finish, authored by you.
It's worth pairing this with the protection that sits next to it. Ownership clarity handles the ideas you *do* use; independent development handles the ideas you *don't*, or that merely resemble your own plans. Together they cover both sides of the fear. If you haven't read it yet, independent development and your Board explains why a coincidental overlap between a pitch and your own work isn't a problem you have to manage. And for the wider context of building a world with an audience while keeping authorship intact, see audience-backed development.
Frequently asked questions
- If I canonize a fan's pitch, do they own that part of my story?
- No. When someone submits to a Board, the Board Participation Terms have them grant you and CanonBoard a broad, royalty-free license to use and build on the idea, and they keep only whatever rights they had in their own underlying idea — they aren't granted any ownership of your story. Canonizing a pitch gives the contributor credit through the Board, not a stake in your world. Ownership of the work you build stays yours.
- Does using a pitch make it 'co-authored'?
- Not in any ownership sense. Credit through the Board acknowledges that a contributor's idea helped, but the terms are explicit that canonization creates no ownership, partnership, or compensation obligation beyond that credit. You remain the author of your world; a canonized pitch is an idea you chose to use, attributed to the person who offered it.
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