i'm seeing this situation between 2 people i know. i'm wondering who owns the site? and who owns the content? the 2 guys made a deal to develop a domain name the first guy owned the domain name the second guy had some capital they decided to split the entire cost of development and the cost to hire someone for seo work. the site has been up a year, doing great in the search engines. The site ranks in the top 3 for some very competitive keywords. A few months ago the site was getting over 10,000 targeted hits a month! the domain name was never transfered into a joint account to include a company name of guy #2s name. who would typically own the domain? who would typicalls own the content? I know this is probably a big time lawyer question, but i'm just watching from the outside. so it doesn't involve me, but I have had oppurtunities and i'm sure we all could easily be in this situation! what do you think would be the best way to protect yourself if you were guy #2?
It's actually pretty simple.. 1. Is there a signed contract saying that they both jointly own the website domain / business?? If yes, then the company "owns" it.. If no, then the guy that registered it owns it.. An argument could be made that even without a contract there could be a legal battle of ownership and then it comes down to who has the better lawyer..
On top of that, it really comes down to who has the $499.00/hour attorney rather then who has the public defender attorney. All in all standing, the person who registered the domain owns it. *That is if there was no contract signed of course.
Feel free to give me a call on Monday. We deal with this issue all the time. I would be happy to provide some background on how these things typically work. The short answer is that whoever is listed as the registrant in the whois database. That person has some leverage, subject to legal arguments of joint ownership.
Also, depending on what state you are in. There are some states that say verbal agreements are legally binding contracts so...again, whoever gets the best lawyer is who owns it.