Our rights?

[Mad Frog]

Question:

This is a long story, but I'll cut it very short:

Regarding a website we designed. (coding/graphics/photography)

No written contract, no official verbal agreement, nothing in writing or email, no handover contract, we're hosting it as well. Just to clear up, who owns the copyright on this and can we take away our design if have to?

 

[F_B]

The Author of "the work" is the owner of any copyright unless the author is an employee, and the work is made during the course of the author's employment, then the Employer owns the copyright.

If the work was jointly authored things get more tricky. If it is discernible as to who authored what (e.g. "Bob" did the graphics, "John" coded the site and "Fred" wrote the content) then Bob, John and Fred own the copyright to the parts they respectively made.

If it is not discernible who authored what (e.g. Fred and Bob wrote the content together) then the work is considered to be jointly owned between Fred and Bob.

Furthermore, copyright resides in more than just the content. For example the way text is published has copyright (the arrangement of the words on the page for book publishers), as well as the font. So if you've had more people "author" those sections, each individual will own the copyright in those parts of the work.

Copyright is classed as personal property so it can be bought and sold. So you can buy the rights from each contributor and consolidate the ownership of the rights.

If you made this website for somebody, and there is no agreement that they will own the rights to the website, then you are the owner.

To be honest, if you made the website, and host it, you can withdraw it. Withdrawing the work isn't an infringing act.

Unfortunately, the brevity of your story makes it hard to give decent advice. Copyright ownership can get funky. The above is just the basics and the facts of the "bigger picture" may produce a different result.

 

[Mad Frog]

Hi Frazer thanks for the reply, more details for you, but you've pretty much confirmed what I was thinking:

1) No contract, written, verbal or otherwise.
2) All work - design, coding, graphics and photography done by us and our team
3) We host the website
4) It was free

Basically one of our freelance designers did a separate job for a client a while ago, not connected with us, meeting all requirements at the time, but the client still decided to try and sue our freelance designer - to be honest there isn't a case, but that's a separate matter.

Coincidently, as this designer also designed/photography the client's (free website as above) countered with- they should pay for the website design then or take the designs away. Just to reiterate, this designer works for us on a freelance basis and my understanding is that until a handover contract is signed we/designer own the copyright on any work done.

To settle this amicably, we suggested that if the client drops the case against our freelance designer we'll be happy to hand everything to do with the website over and be done with it- to which the client agreed.

Terms were drawn up and sent, the client chose to ignore them so we were instructed by our freelance designer to take the website down. The client has decided to now pursue the original case and us now as well!

Am I right in thinking that with no money exchanged and no contract in place we're perfectly in our rights to do this?

 

[kulture]

This is two separate things and you should never have got involved. You say the freelance consultant was working FOR YOU to develop the site, in which case I would suggest that you own the copyright in the absence of any other contract. You should NOT have linked the two and should not have threatened to take the site down with regard to the completely separate matter. Why are you taking instructions from the freelance consultant?