rossH - 5:12 pm on Nov 13, 2003 (gmt 0)

I agree that first you should contact the original designer and get clear who owns what - odds are good the rest is moot.

My business advice to you is never to commission any design project without insisting on ownership. Photographers very often only allow licensing of their work by clients, and retain full copyright, but I know of no other design or art creation process that does this - certainly not web development.

For digital graphics and custom design, and for programming, I would never commission any work I couldn't own outright. I would always be seeking to "specially commission a work made for hire".

In my opinion as a web developer, you should seek to own any website you commission, it's absurd commercially in this market for any developer to retain any kind of hold on the site after full payment. If there's a maintenance agreement this should clearly reference ownership of the product, and all new creations of maintenance should become yours upon payment. Copyright over code and content should assign to you specifically, and the site should state that. You shouldn't be obligated to add a link to your developer from your site, and the developer should ask your permission to use a screen capture or image representation of your site in his/her portfolio.