pleeker - 6:02 pm on Nov 13, 2003 (gmt 0)

I'm not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice, but I do read lots of legal mailing lists and forums ... :)

From what I understand (and you should really ask a lawyer about this if you can't resolve it amicably on your own):

US copyright law states that the owner of all copyright in a work belong to the creator. As soon as a web designer creates something that is copyrightable and it is 'fixed" in a tangible form of expression (e.g. - made available on the WWW), the copyright of that work belongs to the designer, not the owner of the web site.

(To my knowledge, this applies only to "works made for hire", not to works made as an employee of a company. In other words, when I design a site for one of our company's clients, I don't retain ownership, our company does.)

The law also allows transfer of ownership of these rights if it's agreed to in writing and signed by the creator of the work in question.

With that in mind, it sounds to me like the existing designer feels he/she retains ownership of the copyrightable elements of the site, and is saying to you that your "new" site better not continue to use his/her work, and better be substantially unique from what he/she created for you.

So the question is: Do you have a contract with the original designer which states who owns the site?