Web Design

Who owns your website design?

Posted on July 19, 2019 at 1:11 pm

You may automatically assume that you own the rights to your website design and therefore if someone else was to copy it or part of it, it would be your right to claim against them.

The law states that the person that did the design owns the copyright, so this would mean it is the designer, but if you are a client paying for a bespoke design, then morally the design copyright should belong to the client. Most designers will agree that once all money has been paid to them, you own the right to the design of your site. Some elements cannot be protected by copyright laws but the content and images (if taken by the client) will be. If you buy images from places such as Istock then you are buying the license to use them but not the copyright, meaning other companies can purchase them and use them on their site too.

. It is vital to confirm where you stand with the copyright of a project such as a website or logo upfront and ideally in writing as there have been a few cases of designers suing clients for use of their graphics without consent.

If the design is a template then this cannot be copyrighted as it is not an original bespoke design.   

Posted in Web Design