[thelist] Copyright best practices for redesigns
Seb
seb at poked.org
Wed Jul 16 12:00:35 CDT 2003
On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 09:52:36 -0700, chris <chris at mindsparkmedia.com> wrote:
> When doing a redesign for a client, do most people on this list ensure
> that
> the previous developer has licensed rights to the client to create
> derivative works (i.e. modify) the website? How do you generally broach
> the
> topic with clients who don't even realize they don't own the copyright to
> their websites?
actually the client will probably always retain the copyright to their
website, because it has been purchased from the developer. It's the
developer that doesn't retain the copyrights to the work.
Most design work will fall under the category of work-for-hire, and unless
a contract states specifically that the developer retains rights, they
won't. A developer has absolutely no copyright claim at all to things like
logos, content, layout, etc, unless contractually those rights are
transferred to the developer.
Of course, the thing about copyright is that derivative works are
permissable, so it's fine to copy a layout, graphic, etc., as long as you
make it sufficiently different from the original that some creative effort
can be shown.
- seb
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