This problem often arises for contractors as well. Therefore, we always make sure to add a reciprocal clause in our contracts, since many clients write contracts that consider the contractor's work to fall under the same work-for-hire constraints as an employee's.
Client's original contract... Any work product resulting from [Contractor's] services under this Agreement will become the property of [Client] and shall be considered to be a "work made for hire" within the meaning of the U.S. Copyright Act 17 U.S.C.A. Section 101. [Contractor] agrees to transfer all rights with respect to such work to [Client]. Added language... [Client] hereby grants to [Contractor] a worldwide, royalty free, non-exclusive license in perpetuity to utilize the source code developed for [Client] under this Agreement. This has in some cases resulted in several weeks of wrangling, but has never been thrown out, even with large ad agencies. Our argument has been that if we are using best practices to develop optimal code to create a logical solution for a business problem, we would be cutting our own throat to agree to never use that solution again. We would in fact be legally bound to give any future clients a second-rate solution if the same business problem arises. The added clause only refers to source code, and not graphic design, look-and-feel, logo treatments, etc., which understandably the client would not want used for someone else. Doug Raymond ngenius media inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.ngenius.com ========================================================= Kansas City ColdFusion User Group's website & listserv is hosted through the generous support of Clickdoug.com To send email to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with your request. For hosting solutions http://www.clickdoug.com Featuring Win2003 Enterprise, RedHat Linux, CFMX 6.1. ======================================================
