I just wanted a second opinion after talking to my retained lawyer about this because I am still slightly confused. Yesterday, my client has just forwarded me an email from their ex web designer and he is claiming copywrite fraud etc and he is "raising the roof" that his copywrite is gone and that on my portfolio I have the client listed. Background: I have recently taken over the maintenance of a web site for a local real estate company because the person who designed the site apparently "went bust" and had to go back to his own country. Basically, I took on the work and turned an unhappy client into a happy one. The relationship between myself and the old designer was very amicable at that point and has been until now. The site in question was designed and programmed by this person using php and he had inserted a line of code in the author meta tag saying... <meta name="author" content="4Site Internet. Copyright 4Site Internet Ltd. 1999-<?php echo gmdate("Y",time()) ?>. All rights reserved. www.4siteinternet.com" /> When I took the site over, I replaced his copywrite with mine after making extensive changes to the site. (not the smartest idea i know but everyone does does it, kind of like like speeding, its against the law to speed but everyone does it now and then). Here is the email from him to my client..... <<<< start of email from ex designer... Dear Sandra, (the owner of the web site) I wanted to send you a courtesy email as I have copied you in on an email I have recently sent to 123 Marbella. We in no way want to have an impact on your site operating, however 123 Marbella have been extremely naughty, misleading and infringing copyright notices. Just to clarify a few things for you as I understand having been in the industry a long while and after talking to our lawyers. The site (the final product), the content on it and the domain name are all owned by you. The techniques used - programming and design style, etc. are retained by us, the authors and creators and it is to these which our email refers. The easiest way to think of it is your own Apple Mac. you own it, its yours. You also own the Operating System and software on it. However you do not own the technology used (programming, design techniques, etc.) these remain the property of Apple and the various software companies. They retain these to protect their business and so they are able use those in selling to others (if you owned them you would have rights to them). The main issue in our email refers to a "meta" author tag - this is hidden in the code of the page and states who made the site/page - the design and development. This has been changed from 4Site Internet to 123 Marbella. This is both underhand and illegal, it would be like you changing the copyright notice from Apple to Brecknell, moreover your site is published on the WWW and so they are publishing this internationally, not just on one computer, and are "passing" our work off as their own. I do not believe this to be a simple oversight by a designer as your site is also listed high on their portfolio page of their work (which it is not). If they have promised you a link from their site or this page I would suggest that it is placed under a heading for "Hosting" or "Hosting & maintenance" which is an accurate description. Once again, this is in no way directed at yourselves or Brecknell Properties. It might however be beneficial if you spoke to 123 Marbella so that the situation is resolved without taking it to the next level and legal proceedings. As you know Mark is still in Spain and we are quite capable of tackling this in both Spain and EU/International law to which the copyright infringement pertains. As you know we now have large multi national clients in the UK such as Orange and it is imperative for us to defend the work that we have done, we simply cannot afford to state that we are responsible for the development of a site and when it is looked at the site states it is carried out by a competitor. It was in fact someone at Orange that pointed this out to us and I was extremely embarrassed as you can imagine. I look forward to hearing from you. Regards Glen <<<< end of email There is a line in there which says ...."The techniques used - programming and design style, etc. are retained by us, the authors and creators and it is to these which our email refers." To me, that is kind of like saying, We (ex designer) own everything including design, layout and you (the site owner) own only the content and the domain name. I think in legal terms, yes thats kind of true but its not the real point I am trying to make. I actually called this guy up and asked him to clarify what he means by the comment above and he told me that I have read it wrong and the client actually owns everything, he (ex designer) owns the php coding he has done and the method. I asked him what he meant and he said that he can claim copywrite on the way he has made the coding of the site, which btw the way, is no real breakthough, just a bunch of include files connected to a sloppily arranged MySQL database. The coding he has done is not part of a package of software, its some hand coded php, no mention of licensing anywhere. I did not actually know it was possible to claim copywrite on the "way" you code php, its kind of like saying, "I am copywriting the way I walk" so no one else is allowed to walk like that unless I give them permission to do so. If you think about it, walking is open source too. At the end of this, all I need to know, does his letter "hold any water" in terms of legal threats? I have a lawyer at the ready so for me its not an issue, but can the client be affected by all of this? For me, the only time its serious is when I get a letter from a lawyer, but like I said, just need a second opinion. Thanks to whoever can point me in the right direction.
I think your client owns his site, and all the copyrights belong to him. Buying a PC and getting something custom done is totally different. This is a work done exclusively for your client. IMO, his threat doesn't "hold any water", your client owns his custom programmed site and he is free to make any change he wish.
Not really sure what the guy is on about but if his code is simple why not just change it a bit and then he has nothing to complain about?
Did the site owner have a contract that specified who owns the code? In the U.S. without one he would/could probably have a claim to it. -jay
"Did the site owner have a contract that specified who owns the code? In the U.S. without one he would/could probably have a claim to it." The client does not know about these kind of things and I doubt there is anything on paper in terms of that aspect. But we are in the EU (Spain) so am not sure if he could claim that or not. I know that its possible for him to claim copywrite on the design but he has already said on the phone that the client owns everything in that respect. At any rate, if that issue arises, we just make a new design and then he has wasted his time then.
I'd be interested to hear what your IP lawyer says about. I don't know what the laws in Spain are regarding the issue. With regards to the php coding, what people see in their browsers is the HTML rendered by the code, not the php code itself. You should insert a php comment in the code indicating that the complainer own the copyright on the code. There is no standard convention for the use of the meta author tag as far as I know (nor is it even a requirement to use it all). If your client interprets the author tag as indicating who is publishing the page, I think he is correct in putting his own name there. That said, it wouldn't hurt to insert a comment into the HTML output ( <!-- HTML comment --> )indicating that the programming was done by the complainer. The comment will only be shown to people looking at the code. The design is a different issue. Your client might consider amending any copyright notice to indicate that the site contents are copyright by the client and the site design is copyright by the complainer.