I run a gaming website, this guy worked for me then quit all of a sudden. Besides catching him trying to do some dodgy stuff on the way out, I was copyscaping all of my articles and found he copied the articles and posted them in his own blog. I PM'd him asking him to either remove them or to credit my website as the source since he received the games he reviewed as part of my website. (Public Relations and Publishers were contacted for game companies, we request the games in my websites name and our journalist write the reviews/previews and get to keep the games as a way of payment) From what I understand, since the reviews were for my website with him working for the website I have copyright of the content, is this correct? I want to be sure before proceeding any further.
Depending on the details of the contract between you, your journalist may actually legitimately own the copyright. What you are looking for is legal info about whether his writing could be considered "work made for hire". Here is some relevant information from the US Copyright office: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ9.html Is your journalist an employee? Then you are probably owner of copyright. If he was a salaried member of your staff, you are likely good to go. But if the employer-employee relationship was other than that, it can get complicated. Here are some of the factors that help define whether he's an "employee": However, if your journalist was an independent contractor, whether you hold the copyright to his work depends on your contract with him: You can click the link above for more details.
In the future, make sure any deal you make specifies that you alone will own all rights to the created content.
ty for the quick replies, I think I am covered as he received the game as compensation, I have access to even his forums where he asked for games on behalf of the website using the name of the website. We have a staff page and he is still on it at this point. (one of the things he did before leaving was to mess up our .htaccess file) I think I need to create some sort of agreement that I can send, have journalist fill out, and send back to keep filed.
Just because you "compensated" him says nothing about who owns the rights to the content. He would simply argue that he was compensated for letting you use his content on your website in a non-exclusive manner and that he has every right to use it as well. I have many friends who are writers for magazines and newspapers. Often times they retain the rights to re-publish their work even though a particular website/magazine/newspaper paid them to write the work.
so your saying he gets a game from a publisher to write a review for my website via my website and he can just go post the review all over the internet how he wants? your friends can do that also? if your correct that makes no sense to me.
It depends what deal you made. If you failed to specify then you and he can argue about it. My point to you was that if this is not going to tank your website spend your time on your new deals and forget this one as you are not on the rock solid legal ground you think you are on. Yes, many times an author will write a story for a particular magazine, they will retain rights to their work to publish on their own personal blog, use in a book, or sell to other websites. Yes, my friends who write for major publications often retain rights to their own work and will publish other places later. It simply depends on the deal the parties make. Sometimes the website will buy exclusive rights to publish, sometimes they will have an exclusive right for a period of time. These are all things that can be negotiated.
rock solid legal ground you think your on? If I thought I was on rock solid legal ground I would never have posted this in the first place. And no, I am not going to let him just get away with it and will follow what steps are needed with some of those links provided by Nonny. I asked him to either remove them or give my website credit, and if that doesn't work I will make my request more formal. At the very least I might be able to get his content taken down from the blog site he is using. Hopefully he uses reason with this. I already had to expose him for some other stuff, and I am sure he doesn't want anymore problems as it will make it that much harder for him to work for another website. Thanks for the info Nonny.