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 -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
