I'm surprised I havn't seen this question come up before (might have
just missed it) but it's an excellent question so forgive the
crossposting as it's extremely relevant to coders and those purchasing
services of coders.
Anyone who's gotten married and hired a wedding photographer is probably
familiar with the idea of You can't make your own reprints, the photos
are owned by the photographer. What kind of BS is that eh? It was
your wedding! You paid the guy, right?
I read a really interesting article talking about this a while ago and
found out that they key words you want to use (if you want to own what
you pay for) are the words work for hire. Usually this would be put
in the contract or even on the check you use to pay for the services..
Signing this check constitutes the payee's acknowledgement that the
services performed and the final output/art/photos/etc is considered a
Work for Hire or something like that. It's not good enough to say All
copy rights transfer to the client apparently.
How I understand it is this... Any artist (musician, coder, author,
painter, etc) has an implicit copyright on whatever they make as soon as
they make it. While in the process of making something, it's
considered a Work in progress and has additional rights under certain
laws (see the Steve Jackson case with the Secret Service about them
seizing electronic copies of a game manual that was in progress as a
suspected guide to hacking. The electronic copies weren't protected
back then whereas a printed copy would have been.. But they may be
protected from seizure in legal cases these days... Not sure).
Anyway... So you write this code and you own it. Regardless of whether
someone paid you to write it. Unless of course you have an
intellectual property thing with the company you work for (like I do..
It says whatever I create for the company... On company time... Is
theirs).
So all those websites and PHP scripts that you set up for people...
They're yours. Unless the client specifies that it's a work for hire
in your contract or on the check you gotta sign to get your bucks.
Now from the client's side of things.. Because we don't always write our
own stuff.. It's important to know about this as well so you can
protect your investment. I don't know that a coder can legally demand
that you stop using their code, but it means that if you want to re-sell
what you had developed, you need to clear it with the coder first. A
lot of people don't know this stuff and it's hard to find out when
someone's pirating code that technically belongs to you.. But it's good
to know what rights you do have.
Doing a quick search on Yahoo for work for hire and copyright, I
found a TON of sites that seem to cover the subject. I don't have time
to read them, but at a glance, some of these sounded like good things to
check up on:
http://www.weblawresources.com/Work-For-Hire-Clause.htm
http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/2000/loc-2000-02.html
http://www.copylaw.com/new_articles/wfh.html
http://repositories.cdlib.org/boaltwp/55/
http://www.keytlaw.com/Copyrights/wfhire.htm
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html
http://www.music-law.com/workforhire.html
Hope this helps and maybe informs a few people. You can ask me
questions if you want, but this is literally all I know about the
subject. You're better off reading up on the sites above (and Googling
for others) and talking to a copyright lawyer about the matter if you
want more details.
Good luck everyone!
-TG
-Original Message-
From: Michael Cortes [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 2:12 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PHP-DB] Please point me in the right direction...
I have a question about contracts or agreements.
I am considering hiring a local company to do some coding for
us in LAMP to
augment what we have done already. I have a problem with the
standard we
own the code and copyright clause in thier service agreement.
Can someone point me to the correct mailing list as I don't
wish to start an
inapropriate thread.
Thank you.
--
Michael Cortes
Fort LeBoeuf School District
34 East Ninth Street
PO Box 810
Waterford PA 16441-0810
814.796.4795
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