Skier - 6:58 pm on Nov 13, 2003 (gmt 0)

Well, I ran out of time and had the discussion with the original designer a few minutes ago.

Smiley & divaone - You were so right about the difference between e-mail and telephone. Talking directly is critical. We read too much into his e-mail and jumped to incorrect conclusions.

Ross -

My business advice to you is never to commission any design project without insisting on ownership.

Lesson learned!

pleeker - Thank you for the detailed information. All my sources agree with your description of the legal situation.
At a practical level doen't this strike you all as a crazy way of arranging things? Client owns the site but designer owns the code - neither can work without the other. Any "reasonable person" would agree that if you hire someone to build you something, pay for it and use it for a few years - you own it. It is intuitively obvious to a layman. In another field, we used to say that the true test of ownership was whether you had the legal right to sell it to someone else. In this case I think we could legally sell the whole site...

What does the contract say? - There is no written contract. There has been no transfer of author's ownership. Another lesson learned.

So what happened?
It turns out that the designer was not looking at it in a legalistic way at all. In fact his perception was almost the reverse of mine. He wanted to use the code for another project and feared that we might constrain his use of the code. He has no interest in delaying or obstructing our further development of the site.

Now I'm starting to wonder what ownership issues will arise with respect to the updated site. When the new developer has built upon the work of the original developer and we try to secure ownership, will the legal rights of the original designer continue to haunt the project?