Who Owns the rights to a website?

[Markz]

As we`re on this subject...

Is it the domain name owner ultimately? The company who it is registered under?

[ChiliPepperWeb]

That's really not just one question, because several things are involved.

The ownership of a domain name is determined by who is listed as the Registrant Contact in the whois information. If you let a company purchase a domain name on your behalf, make absolutely certain that you are listed as the Registrant, and preferably the Administrative Contact as well. More grief comes from failure to do this than anything else I've seen, and it's a major pet peeve of mine. Read here for more complete information on protecting your domain:
chilipepperweb.net/understanding-domains.html

Hosting ownership boils down to whose name is on the account and who is paying for it. In this case, the owner of the files stored on the hosting account, if different, still has some rights, but you can find yourself in an extended battle to get access to your files if your name is not on the hosting account, depending on the host you are dealing with.

Ownership of the design and actual files is very dependent on your agreement with the designer. Generally ownership of all files should be transferred to you once you have finished paying the designer for his hard work, but not before. However, I have seen a contract where the customer only owned the html, jpeg and published Flash files that made up the finished product. The design company retained ownership of all of the layered Photoshop files and editable Flash files and wanted an additional $15,000 to buy them after they had already charged something like $30,000 for the website. It wasn't a big website, but very graphic heavy (still not worth what they paid for it though), and they wound up having the company I worked for at the time build them a whole new one instead for much less. They did not realize this was in their contract until they had asked us to make some changes and I told them they needed to get the originals from the designer, and that was the answer they got. The lesson there is before you hire anybody to build a website for you, get a written agreement and read the fine print, preferably twice. And pay the bill, of course.

[NealRM]

Website and Photographs follow simular copywrite previsions. Both are owned by the creater unless they specificly sign away the rights. The URL is owned by whoever buy it. It is independent of the website software.

[arenetwork]

Possession is 9/10ths of the law.

Contracts should always be spelled out regarding these items.

ie: unless otherwise stipulated, all rights to code, intellectual property, or assembled content shall become the property of XYX company unless otherwise stipulated or covered by a previous copyright.

This has always protected me.

[Markz]

Good info there thanks for that.

That's really not just one question, because several things are involved.

The ownership of a domain name is determined by who is listed as the Registrant Contact in the whois information. If you let a company purchase a domain name on your behalf, make absolutely certain that you are listed as the Registrant, and preferably the Administrative Contact as well. More grief comes from failure to do this than anything else I've seen, and it's a major pet peeve of mine. Read here for more complete information on protecting your domain:
chilipepperweb.net/understanding-domains.html"

Hosting ownership boils down to whose name is on the account and who is paying for it. In this case, the owner of the files stored on the hosting account, if different, still has some rights, but you can find yourself in an extended battle to get access to your files if your name is not on the hosting account, depending on the host you are dealing with.

Ownership of the design and actual files is very dependent on your agreement with the designer. Generally ownership of all files should be transferred to you once you have finished paying the designer for his hard work, but not before. However, I have seen a contract where the customer only owned the html, jpeg and published Flash files that made up the finished product. The design company retained ownership of all of the layered Photoshop files and editable Flash files and wanted an additional $15,000 to buy them after they had already charged something like $30,000 for the website. It wasn't a big website, but very graphic heavy (still not worth what they paid for it though), and they wound up having the company I worked for at the time build them a whole new one instead for much less. They did not realize this was in their contract until they had asked us to make some changes and I told them they needed to get the originals from the designer, and that was the answer they got. The lesson there is before you hire anybody to build a website for you, get a written agreement and read the fine print, preferably twice. And pay the bill, of course.

[TheBrainchildGroup]

ChiliPepperWeb,

EXCELLENT post!!!!!

-AS

[webmaster]

If you are talking about a website design (Copyright) as opposed to a domain name, the answer was provided above - the design itself is copyright the creator of the work unless otherwise contracted previous to it's creation to sign over the rights to it "in writing"