A properly drafted agreement defines your relationship and reflects the actual contract between the parties. For example, licence agreements relating to industrial or intellectual property must be in writing, in order to prevent the property from being in the public domain. Another example would be security interest registrations under the Personal Property Security Act, which are not perfected without a written agreement. Further, if something goes wrong with your business arrangement, you have a written agreement to rely on. A property drafted agreement includes terms that set out, among other things, when and how notice to a party should be delivered, how a breach of a term of the agreement can be repaired, how the agreement can be terminated, and when a party is responsible for indemnifying another party for damages incurred. If the terms of the business arrangement are breached, resulting in a court action, it is always more difficult to prove a breach of a verbal agreement than a properly drafted written agreement.