Hey, I bought a site in September and I was told it was unique. It is a video clip site with a "unique" script as the backend, so I was told anyway. I paid around $800 for it - Maybe more but not much. Obviously no-one is going to pay $800 for a new site running a script that other sites have. I wasn't going to buy the site because the only value was the script, but since it was unique I thought why not. I bought the site from someone that paid to have it developed for himself by a company as a unique script. I bought the site but never had time to develop it so decided to sell it after a few months, then I got an email telling me the script wasn't unique and I couldn't resell it. Someone then told me that another few sites were using the exact same script, that was meant to be "unique" for my site. I was told by someone from the company that coded it: After someone posted in my sales thread that another site was using it, the company then told me they owned the rights to the script and other sites are using it. Where do I stand here? I am the owner of the script, I took over ownership from the person that paid to have it developed, yet the company is selling the script to other sites, which I am assuming is a lot less than what I paid for it... I was really annoyed about this but I have decided to pay someone to add clips to it and develop it a bit but I want to know where I stand in regards to the script itself. Thanks
Note, before answering I am not a lawyer -- the first thought that comes to mind here is did the original owner have a contract stating the software was a 'work for hire' and that all copyright would be transferred to the buyer. Next is the application/site built using Open Source or GPL code? I'm not sure what you have in writing but this is where you should start with respect to determining your ownership to the code. You may also want to join/post your question InternetBar.org -- they might be able to give you some advice.