Intellectual property and subsequent work by others

[nikcain]

I've seen advice about keeping IP rights on components that you have written yourself and are likely to reuse in other projects.

If I contractually protect various pieces used in a client's site, what happens later if they hire another developer, and he needs to make edits in the components I supplied?

I'm mainly interested in protecting the code so it doesn't get resold, rather than forcing the client to be bound in hiring me to develop their site. If my contract allows another developer to make a change, do I still own the IP on the component as a whole?

Nik

[KDLA]

Well, according to copyright law, a work even modified by another is still considered yours, because you created the original.

You might consider hosting those components on your own site, so a future developer can not access them without your divulging the FTP information.

I ran into this with a client of mine. They were using a CMS that was exclusive to their web-hosting environment. It could not be transferred out of that environment, or edited by me. We figured it for a piece of junk, and developed our own. However, if you've got a good product, a client will pay a small fee to you to make adjustments, if they're really wanted and needed. I have another client that doesn't have a problem with that because they really like the (web) service provided by the component.