Thread: Legal Question/Not Getting Paid..!

Sorry - bit of a long one this....

Unfortunately I'm in a situation where I have not been paid for a site I did almost 6 months ago. To cut a long and boring story short - I no longer have any admin access to the site, yet the site I designed is still sat there live, mocking me.

The client stopped returning calls/emails until I eventually had to threaten them with taking the site down unless I received payment (I had admin access at the time). They acknowledged this email and said the cheque was in the post. When the cheque eventually did arrive (about a week later) it wasn't anywhere near the full amount I was owed, so I had to enter into another spiral of emailing and calling them, without any joy. I eventually gave them a couple of days notice of the site being taken down and as they still didn't get back to me, I finally decided to pull the site and I removed the site from the server. I also took down their email.

I have since been cut out of the loop, as they went direct to the sites host and after the involvement of their solicitor, they were given admin access and put the site back up. So now I'm out of the loop, the site I created is sat there and I'm out of pocket! Obviously I'll have to go to the trouble of contacting a solicitor now and this is just going to be more trouble than it's worth.

I'm wondering though, can I contact the sites host directly and get them to remove the "design". Afterall, I haven't been paid for it and I never signed it over to the clilent?

The big question.
Do you have a contract signed?

Originally Posted by jellycopter

they went direct to the sites host and after the involvement of their solicitor, they were given admin access and put the site back up. So now I'm out of the loop,

If I could play the devils advocate ,
The solicitor in giving advice to his client had two options here ,
Pay you or take you out of the loop why did he/she take the latter ,
Was there a problem ??

As louie said - do you have a signed contract? If not then, legally, you're probably out of luck.

Originally Posted by TheMenace

As louie said - do you have a signed contract? If not then, legally, you're probably out of luck.

That's wrong a contract does not have to be written down to come in to force.

Have a read of this Copyright in custom code: Who owns commissioned software?. As far as I can tell the OP would have a "moral right" and other rights to the work(s) he created, these rights have not been transferred to the client, so the client is infringing on the OP's copyright.

You may want to send a cease and desist letter to the client, reaffirming all your right in the work(s) and requesting that all infringing work(s) be removed from his website and computers with immediate effect. You don't necessarily need a solicitor to write this letter, but it might help to get in contact with one anyway (ring and get a ball park quote first ).