>John...
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>So what you are saying is that they paid you to write software for them - absent an agreement for joint ownership or provisions for copyright...
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>Sounds like work for hire to me...
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>And after the fact, you filed a copyright instead of having those terms hashed out before you began work.
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>What I see here is after the fact, you took ownership back, after getting paid. And then, you charged them again....
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>And all the while, we worry about consultants getting nailed by clients..< g >..
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>Of course, the company had little option since it appears that customization was required and they had to go to you. In effect, they were a company held hostage - which is usually the case in client/software development contract scenarios.
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>I also think the company may not of known of the rights they really possessed. And for course - in our system - if you don't assert your rights, for the most part, you lose them. The legal fairy is not going to right the issue. You need to do your own lawyering in this country...
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>It begs the question of whether you really could have rightfully filed the copyright. In effect, you would have had to claim that you had the sole right - as an author. In a work for hire situation, the client who is actually paying for the work, is for all intents and purposes, the author.
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>The statutory notes in 17 USCA 201 don't address the issue of software directly. Still, it addresses the general issue. It appears to be clear that what you are describing is a work for hire situation - absent a contractual agreement stating that you by yourself or jointly would hold the copyright. I say this because if there was such an agreement, you would not have had to secure a copyright after the fact.
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>FWIW, I would not have done the same thing. I don't think what you did was right on an ethical basis. Whether it was legal or not is another issue. Most certainly, I will research that issue as this has given me an idea for a law review article. I will definitely pose this scenario to my property law prof tonight!!
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>If a client pays me for a module, they get a module. If they want to sell it, fine. If I was concerned about that scenario, it would have been up to me to specify that - before the fact - in a contract.
>If they want customizations, I will be happy to do it, if they pay me for the services...
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>It is easy to have 20/20 hindsight. And let's face it...had they asserted their rights, you would have most likely backed down yourself.
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Yeah, they were planning on making a bunch of money off my code, and paying me peanuts to modify the code. I saw an opportunity to better my position and took it, just as they would have had they known what they were doing.