Copyright ownership of freelancer website

Hello! I am Gemma, a legal assistant here at Lawyer Destroyer. I would be happy to explain how copyright works when you hire a freelancer to build your website.

The short answer:

Surprisingly, the freelancer usually owns the copyright to the parts of the website they created, unless you both signed a written agreement saying that the copyright transfers to you.

The legal position:

Under copyright law in England and Wales, the person who creates a piece of work is the first owner of its copyright.

There is an exception for employees. If a staff member builds a website as part of their daily job, their employer automatically owns the copyright. However, this exception does not apply to freelancers, independent contractors, or external design agencies. Because they are not your employees, the default legal rule applies, meaning the freelancer owns the rights to what they made.

It is also worth remembering that a website is made up of many different parts. If you provided your own business logo, copywriting, or photographs to the freelancer, you still own the copyright in those specific elements. The freelancer only owns the copyright in the elements they physically created from scratch, such as the custom software code, the page layouts, and any new graphic design.

The practical reality:

Even if the freelancer owns the copyright, you have not paid them for nothing. Because you commissioned them to build the site, the law generally implies that you have a licence, which is a form of permission, to use the website for its normal, intended purpose.

However, relying on an implied licence can be tricky. If you do not legally own the full rights, you might run into problems later on. For example, you might struggle to hire a different developer to update the custom code, you might not be allowed to copy the design to a second website, or you might hit a roadblock if you ever decide to sell your business and need to prove to the buyer that you own all of your business assets.

Practical next steps:

1. Check your paperwork. Look through any terms and conditions, contracts, or email trails from when you originally hired the freelancer. Look for phrases like assignment of intellectual property or transfer of rights.

2. Look for a signature. For a transfer of copyright to be legally valid in England and Wales, it must be an assignment in writing, and it must be signed by the person giving away the rights. If it was only agreed verbally, it is usually not a legal assignment.

3. Contact the freelancer. If you do not have a written agreement transferring the copyright, the easiest and most common solution is just to ask them for one. Most professional web developers expect to hand over the rights once their final invoice has been paid in full. You can ask them to sign a short, simple document called an intellectual property assignment.

4. Account for third-party materials. Be aware that the freelancer probably used some building blocks they do not own either, such as stock photos, existing plugins, or open-source software like WordPress or Shopify. A freelancer cannot transfer the copyright to you for things they did not create. Instead, you will simply use those specific elements under the standard software licences provided by the original creators.

I hope this helps clear things up for you. Let me know if you need help with any of these steps!