I have a question and I ponder over it a lot. Say for example I provide a web design services and mention that i provide for $99 (example) - Webdesigning - free domain name -free hosting I register domains on my name and host it on my server. In my Terms and condition I mention something like: as per the agreement, the client has been provided with a webdesign to meet his needs. The domain name, email services and hosting are leased to the client on a yearly basis. All rights of ownership stays with XYZ WebDesigns ( My company name). XYZ WebDesigns takes no responsibility for the Content on the website, email correspondences generated by client. Client is lease this website/domain/email/hosting for his use on yearly basis. XYZ reserves the right to cancel the lease at the end of the term of every year! basically I wish to keep full ownership of the domains at the end of the game. Can I do that? Is it legal?
It is Legal, however I have to ask why anyone with any intellegence would want to rent a domain name.
I am just curious...coz I came across a website developing company doing something like that.... I posted the same question on DP forum and I found members cursing me...( I wanted to see peoples opinion) Let me ask you this... Who owns the website design! Does the webmaster have a right to keep his website design to him, or he looses that right.... I dont want to make a cheap site and client says bye bye to me and goes to other to shop the design modification ?? Microsoft allows you to use software..but doesnot allow you to modify the software or give you the rights!
There's nothing wrong with you licensing your design to a company. Just let them know beforehand. Its something you created, so its perfectly fine you control its use. The part of your intial question and business practice that has everyone's panties in a bunch is you leasing a domain name to someone. There's no reason for you to own PlumbingByGarySmith.com and lease it to Gary Smith. He should own that and be able to point it anywhere he wants. Just because he might be to naive to know any better and accept your terms, doesn't make it right.
It's legal if you make it clear in your agreement with the client. While I think it is unusual, I know of at least two examples where domains were leased. In one case, it was a single word dot com URL with a very high value. A friend of mine bought the URL in the early days and leased it for about 10 years. He felt it had a lot of future value but didn't want to sell it immediately. In another case, a person bought several generic dot com URLs (by way of example, City1Restaurant, City2Restaurant, City3Restaurant). Then, a restaurant that used his design services could use, but not own, that URL. Presumably, they used it in addition to another URL with the restaurant name, but I don't know if that was always the case. Obviously, it is better for the client to own his URL because he'll lose the benefit of anything he does to build traffic to the site, but in the two cases I know of, there was at least some logical reason for going along with the lease.