Who owns my design?

At the company I co-own, we have it in our contract that the content is the client's, but the design is ours. We're just letting them use it.

That said, probably the worst I would do if someone hacked up our design is just ask them to remove the "Design by..." blurb. And ask them why they didn't have us work on it for them.

fifeclub - Tim is exactly right, I have standard legal doc that they sign at commencment of development that outlines what is there's and what is yours. I have had this problem 2 times in the past and the doc holds up. Other developers will not touch it once they read the terms. At the end of the day the design is theirs but the code is mine.

Copyright is owned by whoever created the design. To hand over copyright requires a letter by the author.

-Rob

If you make a website for someone and if they pay you for it, they can do what ever they like with it. If they want to cut it up into 9,000 pieces, you should just leave them be.

If I paid someone $2000 to design a website and then I want to modify it, if the designer (who has been paid in full) said anything to me, I'd tell him where to go and how to get there.

MrLeN

US Copyright law says you own the copyright to any tangible works the moment you create it. So yes, you own the design/layout and any graphics you created. This is different if you are working *for* a firm...though you may be the designer, it is the company that own the copyright because it would be created under 'works for hire'.

I put it in my contract that I retain copyright to the design and any images that I create, and that the client own copyright of text content and any photos/images they provide.

In the case of an existing logo, the person that created the logo owns the copyright, and you cannot legally alter it without permission in writing from the person who created it.

Even photographers include copyright notice with your photos.

You can read all of the legalities at the US Copyright Office Website.

If I created a website for someone, especially if they paid me good money, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I uttered even one word about what they could and couldn't do with the website I created for them.

The only thing I wouldn't like is if they re-packaged the template and started selling it. But even so, I wouldn't say anything, because they paid the money. The moment I receive money for that design, I no longer have any authority over it at all. It's gone. Anyone that would try to hold a client down with copyright threats needs to do some soul searching (imho).

I'd like to see the actual laws to try and determine how people come to such conclusions.

MrLeN

The actual US laws are in the link above. That's the US Copyright Office at the Library Of Congress.

Personally I don't want to spend three months developing a logo/website/print work and then have a client change designers and have another designer 1)Modify my hard work without my permission and 2) Take credit for my work..i.e. work that they did not create to begin with.

I did not even have legal right to scan my son's graduation photos. Yes, I wrote a letter to the photographer asking to scan and possibly display on the web, and yes I got permission from him to do so.

I have heard and seen other developers who have a 2 price structure, the first price is for just getting a site built, the customer does not own the rights to the design or the graphic but is simply allowed to use it, this is the case in many templated designs.

The 2nd price is for full ownership of everything. Im not sure if I would run with this system, but at least the customer knows about it.

I guess the most important thing is lay all of your cards on the table at the beginning and let the customer know what it is exactly that they are buying. I agree with Roo that if they paid good money then they should own it, but if they didnt they paid budget prices then maybe not.

I have seen the same thing Stu, as you say, on the template websites.

so heres my question, I guess Its related...

What if someone built this site with quite a "standard look" which uses css to build up the page... Then someone, edited the css and made an entirely different look without using any graphics used by that said page... Only the visible similarity is the structure of the page and the css outline...

Could Someone use it without permission?

What you need to keep in mind is the difference between what is technically legal and what is commonly practical. On a technically legal basis they took your code and just altered it. It doesn't even matter if they altered it greatly or just slightly. It is copyright infringement. BUT in the real world you wouldn't even consider hiring a lawyer to actually do anything about it. Even if it was flat out copying, it wouldn't be worth your time unless your could prove in court that your business was hurt by a significant amount.

Here are two related stories:

1) The computer example:
It's just like when they made the first non-IBM clone, they went to great lenghts to make sure that nobody who worked on it ever EVER fidled around inside an IBM or knew how IBM's worked - just incase there were any coincidental similarities they could prove they started from scratch. In this case IBM did sue because millions of dollars were at stake, but they lost their case because of the careful steps taken by the clone makers to not use anything from the IBM's, not even knowledge of how they work.

2) My own experience:
By day I'm a tv producer. About 5 years ago we produced a promo for a show that was 100% original concept. Trust me, no chance at all of anybody coming up with the same idea we did. Well we were nominated for a national award for this promo and we come to find out that a promo with exactly the same concept was also nominated for a national award, from a bigger market. As if it weren't obvious that they must've seen our promos and stolen the idea, at the awards ceremony we ran into the manager from that other station. He proudly admitted that he monitored our station all the time and that's where he got the idea. He even had the nerve to suggest that we send his more ideas in the future. He won a national award for his copy-cat promo. Now here's an example where he clearly ripped off our copyright (granted instantly when we mad ours) and we can prove it damaged our reputation because everybody assumed that we stole our idea from the larger market - but in the real world, even though we were mad, it wasn't even close to being worth our time to do anything about it. You just curse in private and let it go.

Just make sure its documented from the outset. I have in my contract that all coding , navigation, layout, blah de blah is mine until the client requests it.

They then get a CD with site and databases on and its removed from my servers. Of course the fact that I use ColdFusion for most of the sites helps as there aren't as many CF developers around!!

By the way, you own Copyright as soon as you've created it, to be eligible to recieve monies from Copyright infringement, your Copyright MUST be registered.

-Rob