xcoderx Posted August 17, 2009 Share Posted August 17, 2009 anyone got form where a developer wil sign for the client that the site is now copyright of the client and the developer wil not try to sell or even use that script for anybody? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam Posted August 17, 2009 Share Posted August 17, 2009 Err I don't really know of any but, why not just make one? Wouldn't exactly be hard... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xcoderx Posted August 18, 2009 Author Share Posted August 18, 2009 but what wil be the format like? Have not döe bèore so do not have idea either lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waynew Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 Whatever content the client submits to you (pictures, text etc) is already owned by them. That means that they already have content copyright. The design copyright is owned by you. You don't have to place a notice on their website concerning your ownership of the design if you don't want to (I don't think any developer really does this - they just put their link at the end). If you give over to them, the design copyright of the website, you should charge them alot more, as that means that you can't re-use any of the code or graphics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 Are you sure about that? If I'm paying someone to create something for me, I think it's reasonable to expect that full ownership will be transferred too me unless otherwise stated in a contract. If I pay someone to build me a house, I expect that I'll actually own the house. I don't see why it's different with a website. Also, if you're at work and you write a piece of software. Obviously you'll not retain ownership of what you wrote. You did it on company time and they paid you to do it. As far as I'm concerned, it's not different just because you're a freelancer and isn't physically in the client's house (or whatever) doing it. If you want to retain partial or full ownership of things you did for a client you should specify it in the contract. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xcoderx Posted August 18, 2009 Author Share Posted August 18, 2009 100% agreed with you daniel bro. Dont know why some people demand their name and link when they are being paid whats the sense of keeping name etc in design. I once did that only when the client said it was ok if i leave my name in the template. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonnoTheDev Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 Are you sure about that? If I'm paying someone to create something for me, I think it's reasonable to expect that full ownership will be transferred too me unless otherwise stated in a contract Not really. All applications I develop I still maintain 100% ownership of the source code. The client is effectively purchasing a licence to use it. If you were to hand over the rights to the source code then your client could have the right to prevent you using that code in any other project you work on. Just like buying a copy of microsoft office. You have the licence to install and use the product but microsoft still owns the rights to the source code preventing you making modifications if it were available. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xcoderx Posted August 18, 2009 Author Share Posted August 18, 2009 so how to get the form ready? Cant find any in google either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zq29 Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 Not really. All applications I develop I still maintain 100% ownership of the source code. The client is effectively purchasing a licence to use it. If you were to hand over the rights to the source code then your client could have the right to prevent you using that code in any other project you work on. Just like buying a copy of microsoft office. You have the licence to install and use the product but microsoft still owns the rights to the source code preventing you making modifications if it were available. That's how I work, I thought everyone worked like that... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonnoTheDev Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 so how to get the form ready? Cant find any in google either. Thats because there is no set form. You dont need to do anything fantastic. Get clients to sign off a specification document including your terms (only you know what your terms are). Just lay it out simple i.e. Objective Specification Functionality Web Hosting Price Terms Cost of modifications, etc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.josh Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 Are you sure about that? If I'm paying someone to create something for me, I think it's reasonable to expect that full ownership will be transferred too me unless otherwise stated in a contract. If I pay someone to build me a house, I expect that I'll actually own the house. I don't see why it's different with a website. Also, if you're at work and you write a piece of software. Obviously you'll not retain ownership of what you wrote. You did it on company time and they paid you to do it. As far as I'm concerned, it's not different just because you're a freelancer and isn't physically in the client's house (or whatever) doing it. If you want to retain partial or full ownership of things you did for a client you should specify it in the contract. so what about 3rd party scripts that are more often than not used? Shopping carts, content management systems, frameworks, etc.. ? Client is not receiving full 100% ownership of those things. I never charge clients for scripts anyways. My fees are always based on $$/hr as far as reviewing/writing/installing/fixing/etc.. stuff. In other words, people pay for my time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xylex Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 xcoderx- You're describing a "work made for hire" agreement. If you google for that, you may have some better luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 Are you sure about that? If I'm paying someone to create something for me, I think it's reasonable to expect that full ownership will be transferred too me unless otherwise stated in a contract Not really. All applications I develop I still maintain 100% ownership of the source code. The client is effectively purchasing a licence to use it. If you were to hand over the rights to the source code then your client could have the right to prevent you using that code in any other project you work on. Just like buying a copy of microsoft office. You have the licence to install and use the product but microsoft still owns the rights to the source code preventing you making modifications if it were available. There is a difference between buying a mass-distributed product that you can buy in a retail store and hiring a team of developers to write an entirely new product from scratch. I'll still hold on to my statement that you'll have to specify in the contract if you wish to retain partial of full ownership as a developer/designer. Note however, that the copyright of course only applies to the work as a whole, not parts of it. For instance, I'm reading a book right now, and there is a sentence that says "Suppose now that A and B are finite subsets of a universal set U." That sentence cannot be copyrighted. I could formulate that sentence entirely independently of that book, but it's highly unlikely that I would write the same book, or even a chapter in the book independently. Therefore, the "your client could have the right to prevent you using that code in any other project you work on" argument doesn't hold. He would prevent you from reusing the project in its entirety (and reasonably so, IMO), but not individual components that are too generic to be copyrighted anyway. Selling a license to a commercial product and selling custom development as a service are two entirely different things. so what about 3rd party scripts that are more often than not used? Shopping carts, content management systems, frameworks, etc.. ? Client is not receiving full 100% ownership of those things. No, of course not. You cannot reassign ownership of something you do not own. Nor can you sell something you do not own. I'm exclusively talking about code you specifically wrote for the client, or artwork you created for the client. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waynew Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 So if I use my own db class in the project, I should stop using it in the future? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waynew Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 100% agreed with you daniel bro. Dont know why some people demand their name and link when they are being paid whats the sense of keeping name etc in design. I once did that only when the client said it was ok if i leave my name in the template. I'm sorry but if you choose not to put your link on the bottom of a client's website, you are stupid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xcoderx Posted August 18, 2009 Author Share Posted August 18, 2009 ok again for the second time in this forum u being rude to me wayne. N why should i put my name and link when they have paid me for it? Then this way nobody wil hire anybody to get a site done. coz it wil be a waste for them. Think also from a clients point of view. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 I think most people are willing to do that if you ask. Probably not Fortune 500 businesses, but small clients. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waynew Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 ok again for the second time in this forum u being rude to me wayne. N why should i put my name and link when they have paid me for it? Then this way nobody wil hire anybody to get a site done. coz it wil be a waste for them. Think also from a clients point of view. I'm being honest. The majority of your future clients will most likely be people that seen a website you designed and then followed the footer link to your website. If that link isn't there, you're losing out on referrals AND the possibility of having better search engine rankings. And why would it be a waste of time? It's only a small link in the footer? As long as it's not eye catching and heavier in weight than the rest of the site's visual features, it's not going to cause any harm to anyone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 In fact, this is the footer on PHP Freaks: <div id="footer"> <p id="links">Designed by and developed by <a href="http://www.multimedia-technologies.com">Multimedia Technologies</a> and <a href="http://degeberg.com">Daniel Egeberg</a></p> <p>Copyright © PHP Freaks | <a href="http://www.thewebfreaks.com">The Web Freaks</a></p> </div> 81.43% of my visits come from phpfreaks.com. Then again, my website is shit, so there is not really anything to see there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.josh Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 ok again for the second time in this forum u being rude to me wayne. N why should i put my name and link when they have paid me for it? Then this way nobody wil hire anybody to get a site done. coz it wil be a waste for them. Think also from a clients point of view. I don't think wayne was attacking you specifically, but the notion of not putting a link at the bottom of a page, in general. Having a "powered by/made by/etc.." link at the bottom is actually pretty common for most small/medium sized sites. The only people who don't really do that is bigger companies, and they don't do that because they pay a lot of extra money to not have stuff like that. Which usually involves having everything custom made from scratch in the first place, because a lot of 3rd party stuff requires you to have a link, as part of the ToS/license. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xylex Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 When I was doing the agency stuff, I would always write up my bids padding a little bit and offering a discount for adding my company and link to the bottom of their site. Most clients would be happy to take the discount, though some would be happy to just pay me the extra money, which worked for me. It seemed to work out well for both parties, never ran into any issues either way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xcoderx Posted August 18, 2009 Author Share Posted August 18, 2009 ok agreed to al of u. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrg_alpha Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 Whatever content the client submits to you (pictures, text etc) is already owned by them. That means that they already have content copyright. The design copyright is owned by you. I think this is dependant on the copyright laws of the country in question. In the US for example, unless there is some 'Work for hire' type clause (or something along those lines), the content creator (author) retains the copyrights (as by default, the person responsible for creation is the author, and thus retains authorship / copyrights).. the client basically pays for the rights to use that content. If there is a Work for hire type clause however, then the client owns all the material the author creates (the author relinquishes authorship/copyright ownership). In Canada, it's the inverse by default.. When a client pays, anything the author creates for that client under that contract is owned by the client. This makes for potentially messy understandings between say a client in Canada paying for the services of someone in the US. Depending on which country the contract is bound to (and assuming there is no explicit 'Work for hire' type clause within that contract), there could be potential legal issues that ensue as a result. Gotta love law. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel0 Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 Hence the reason why you would just outline the full ownership terms in the contract. No misunderstandings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrg_alpha Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 Hence the reason why you would just outline the full ownership terms in the contract. No misunderstandings. Amen, bro Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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