pleeker - 7:16 pm on Nov 13, 2003 (gmt 0)

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.

And I meant to (but failed) mention that their advice was excellent, too. Always the best first step.

pleeker - Thank you for the detailed information.

You're welcome. Glad it helped a bit.

At a practical level doen't this strike you all as a crazy way of arranging things?

Yeah, to a degree it is. But the creator of a work has always been the owner of the rights to that work -- whether it's a song, a book, a painting, a web site, whatever -- the creator has to have some protections. The law gives him/her that.

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...

The law would probably say you could sell the business, since it's your creation. And the domain name. But not necessarily the associated web site, since you may not have the rights to sell it.

He has no interest in delaying or obstructing our further development of the site.

Glad to hear it worked out well.

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?

Since the original developer apparently wants some protection to be able to reuse his code, and you want some protection that you can move from what he created for you, it sounds like maybe a good parting agreement that allows you both to do what you want is a good idea.