Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Massachusetts

Re: Work for Hire/Withholding Payment

The terms of the agreement and payment should have been spelled out in advance, and in writing. If they spelled out that this was a work for hire, you should sign the agreement. However, oit sounds like you had an oral agreement only.

While the website -does- sound like it should be treated as a "work-for-hire," allowing ownership to go to the attorney, it does not sound like the attorney required this before you proceeded. Thus, the attorney is playing a game of "oops" hardball.

Your options are to sue for the fees due and let a court decide, or to sign the agreement. Because this seems like bad behavior for an attorney, I actually might tend to vote with filing a suit, especially if you can file in small claims.

Re: Work for Hire/Withholding Payment

Actually, any customer who DOESN'T require either an assignment of copyright or a work-for-hire agreement is asking for trouble. In the early days of the Web site design industry, it was common for customers to overlook this and then find that they had no rights to modify their site because copyright was held by the Web site designer -- very bad and, as I say, quite a common situation. He should also insist upon having the ability to edit the site (this gets tricky if the site is designed with sophisticated software rather than the pedestrian FrontPage junk).

Best wishes,

LDWG

Re: Work for Hire/Withholding Payment

I agree with Atty Graves. Without knowing any details about the specific Work for Hire agreement sent to you, it is still reasonable for your customer to ask you assign all copyright rights to him. Is there any reason why you would not want to do so?

Unless the agreement contains some other objectionable terms, then I see no reason why you would not want to sign it.