This could happen to you!
After several years of increasing activity on his website, Dave decided to move it from a local hosting company to the "cloud." He didn't want to take a chance on downtime disrupting the lucrative online arm of his import business.
He made all the necessary arrangements with one of the big cloud hosts and then instructed his local host to transfer everything. Then the hammer fell. "No problem," they said, "as long as you pay us $100,000 for the copyrights to the site." "Wait," replied Dave. "I paid you to develop that site. It's mine." "Yes, you paid for the development, but not for the copyright."
Mad scrambling followed to no avail, and very shortly Dave heard his lawyer say these fateful words. "The work you paid for does not fall under any of the "work for hire" provisions that automatically transfer copyright. Your contract with the developer/hosting company does not contain any transfer of ownership language. They are correct. Since there is no separate licensing agreement that signs the work over to you, they own the copyright."
Dave had to pay up.
How might your business be damaged if somebody else "owned" your website?
If your contract with your web developer is missing one short, but very important, paragraph, you probably do not own the copyright. I checked this out with The Creekmore Law Firm PC. They confirmed this hidden business risk.
You might want to check with your attorney, too. And you might want to read your web development deal document.
And never forget - everybody is your friend until there is real money involved.
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