SmallBusinessNewz

Recently, I received a desperate sounding email from a colleague and the story, all too familiar, went like this:  Business owner hires web developer. Web developer develops site including registration of domain name and web hosting on behalf of business owner.  Relations sour, business owner fires web developer and web developer essentially holds website hostage.  Now what?

Let's begin at the beginning - can you avoid such a distasteful and potentially costly situation?  When starting a business, one of the first tasks is registering a domain name and launching website design/development.  While websites used to be something tangential to a business, now it can BE your business.  Therefore, it is important that you maintain not only control of website content but perhaps even more critical is control of your website's intellectual property, including the code.

First, it's important to understand the legal phrase "work made for hire."  According to Copyright Law, if you employ or commission work on your behalf, the employer or the person who commissioned the work is deemed to be the author unless the parties agree otherwise.  Meaning, if you hired your web designer to do work on your behalf, technically, you own the intellectual property unless agreed otherwise.  Some web developers will work into the agreement that they own all rights to the site they built for you.  This is why you should thoroughly review the web development agreement given to you!  It is, however, acceptable to allow the developer to display your site for his portfolio, but that is a decision you should make.  Still, this further warrants an agreement between you and your developer.

Because your website needs to attract customers, you as a business owner make the time and effort to interview a multitude of website developers.  Naturally, you want the best, the most cost effective, the most experienced.  This is why you should also take the time to negotiate a detailed website development agreement.  Your relationship will start out very well.  Promises will be made, dreams built, profits quoted.  Although the relationship with your web developer is ideally long term and mutually beneficial…what if it eventually sours?  As hesitant as you would potentially be to consider a prenuptial agreement prior to a marriage, the same forethought should be dedicated to this relationship - my advice is to get things down on paper.  Get your exit plan in place, just in case. This plan should include ownership of the website, domain name and all the code that constitutes your site.

One of the most important things to remember is to register your own domain name and source your own hosting.  Even if you ultimately chose to go with your developer's hosting recommendation, register yourself.  At any given time, you should be able to log into your webhosting, if only because you can.  Certainly not everyone is tech savvy - I understand that - part of doing smart business is farming out work at which you are not an expert.  However, do not allow your lack of tech knowledge to put you in the position of unwittingly handing over your business' keys to your web developer.

Once you select a web developer and before money is exchanged, negotiate an agreement.  If the developer already has one, look it over carefully (his agreement is clearly written to protect him, not you) or better yet, have your attorney review it.  These agreements are not standard.  You could be signing your rights away.  Here are the elements of an agreement that you should look out for:

What if you weren't fortunate enough to receive this advice BEFORE you entered into a working relationship with a web developer, and therefore find yourself in the situation referred to at the beginning of the article?  In the absence of an agreement, you can certainly argue that you retain the rights to your site, but as someone who has seen relationships go bad, this is not a case that you'd like to start litigating.  You could be jeopardizing your site - at best, your site would lie dormant until the issues are resolved.  Another lengthy solution is entering into an agreement after the fact, almost like a post nuptial agreement.  But, let me tell you, it is not easy to negotiate between parties that don't want to have anything to do with each other.

In the story that I mentioned, there was a happy ending.  Luckily the developer did put the website in the business' name so all they had to do was point the site to another hosting company.  Problem solved, but it was a very tense few days.

In summation, when you enthusiastically embark on your next venture, take your head out of the proverbial clouds for long enough to protect yourself!  Make sure you have a thorough web development agreement in place with your selected vendor.  As they say with prenups, "better to be mortified for a month than regretful forever!