Re: Question Regarding legal rights of a Web Site

         The best advice, of course, is to discuss these types of business 
issues in advance and then agree to them in writing in a website 
development (or other) contract (or, if reaching an agreement is not 
possible, then parting ways before any time and expense is actually 
incurred).  See, for example, the following article on GigaLaw.com:

"Ten Tips for Creating a Bad Business Agreement," 
http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/gall-2000-07-p1.html

and other articles on contracts for Internet-related businesses at 
http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/contracts.html

Doug Isenberg, Esq.
Editor & Publisher, GigaLaw.com
FREE daily Internet law news!  Subscribe today at http://www.GigaLaw.com/news


At 12:18 PM 8/22/01 -0400, Nick Ciantro wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>about 7 months ago we were approached by a company interested in having us
>develop and market a web site for them.  Since then we have developed
>somewhat of an unusual agreement with them in which we do work as though we
>are partners in the company to the point in which we have actually put our
>own money into it not to mention time.  Things are going well with all our
>efforts and they pay us a monthly marketing fee and so forth.  Obviously as
>sales increase, tey increase the sum.
>
>Our concern for the time being is that we developed another site on the side
>to help speed up sales a bit.  The second site is doing well.  However, they
>have not paid us a penny for marketing or design on this site.  We did it
>all with our own time and money. We kind of look at it as our own in house
>project to help promote another clients project.  My question is, how can we
>protect our site so that if they should ever go out of business or decide
>not to do business with us, so that they cannot sue us for the site which is
>clearly our.  The domain is in our name and we created the site.  The last
>thing we need is having the site taking away after we put all the time and
>money into it.
>
>With these facts alone, would they have any grounds for trying to take
>control of the site?  Is there anything else we can do to help protect
>ourselves, such as registering the site name with the state as a business
>name?  Copyrights?
>
>Any insight or help would be greatly appreciated.
>
>Thanks all!
>
>Nick

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