Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: Website creation & usage

You have two prior replies indicating that you may have a copyright interest in the website contents notwithstanding that you don't hold a formally-granted copyright and that the corporation "owns" the website itself by virtue of it being registered in its name.

California also has laws respecting the destruction of evidence (which the "other side" may readily do here, perhaps inadvertently) and alteration or destruction of creative works. The latter law is spotty in coverage and unevenly applied, but seems to be gaining force and recognition.

You probably need (at this point) an immediate restraining order -- or at least the threat of one -- to halt erosion and corruption of your creative output. From that point, the course depends upon your wishes and the value of the code you authored. Is the code transportable or valuable elsewhere? Are you harmed more by the loss of the code, etc. or by non-payment, or loss of other expectations? Intellectual-property cases tend to be expensive to bring and maintain.

Re: Website creation & usage

Assuming that you had no written statement as to ownership of the site and its code, you may have a legally enforeable right under current copyright law to stop their use of "your" code.

Re: Website creation & usage

Yes, you may have copyrights in the work that you created. This may, however, depend upon what you put on the site, i.e., whether it is an original work of authorship or whether you put other people's work on the site.

You can and probably should investigate this further.

I am willing to discuss.

J. Caleb Donner

805-494-6557

LEGAL WARRIORS

www.donnerlaw.com