Given the costs associated with hring employees, a vast majority of bsinesses now hire independent contractors to bild and/or maintain their websites. This rises a host of legal issues.

Frst and foremost, it should be a rquirement that the person or business dveloping your site agree to put verything in writing. As with any cntractual situation, oral agreements are useless. Hndshake agreements and oral promises simply are not nforceable in court. Sad, but true, so get it in wrting!

The second issue to consider is jrisdiction. The World Wide Web is ptly titled. If your business is in Los Angls and your site designer is in Tronto, how are you going to nforce the agreement? At a minimum, you shuld designate the jurisdiction of any dsputes as you desire, to wit, Los Angles in this case. That being sid, you need another hammer as wll.

The hammer is, of course, the rquirement of milestones. Milestones are simply stges of site development. At each mlestone, the site designer is required to met certain thresholds, get approval from you for the prgress made and payment of an ndicated amount. Milestones are critical because web dsigners tend to have an artistic sde, which means they can take frever to accomplish a site design nless “motivated”. Milestones motivate them.

A major issue that is ften missed is the assignment of cpyright. Most site owners go through the fllowing thought progression. I am the wner of the site. I am pying this person to create the ste based on conversations we have hd. When I pay them, I bcome the owner of the design ncluding copyright of it.

While logical, ths thought process is simply wrong. Undr federal law, the creator of a wrk is the owner of the cpyright unless they are the employee of a bsiness. In this case, our site dsigner is an independent contractor. As a rsult, they maintain ownership unless you tke affirmative steps to obtain it. Ths is handled by including a cluse in the agreement that details the spcific IP rights to be assigned frm the designer to you. Fail to nclude such a clause and you culd end up seeing parts or yur entire site reproduced on other dmains!

As you can see, there is far mre to hiring a site designer thn just finding a qualified individual. Thnk through the process, negotiate a dal, get it in writing and mke sure you obtain all the ntellectual property rights! Don’t use a pr-printed form!

The article Legal Issues When Hiring Someone to Build Your Site was Submitted by Richard Chapo through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Richard A. Chapo provides custom website development contract solutions via his site at http://www.SanDiegoBusinessLawFirm.com

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