Need help on the Law

[Watcher]

A friend of mine was working for a small online company (they didn?t meet up in real life but they where given tasks on the forums) He has left that company he didn?t sign any contract and the most he ever did to get close to copy write was to put at the bottom of his textures.

He wrote
Copyright of (company unnamed cause of possible legal repercussions)

Note he did not sign anything; Does the company have a ground to not let him take his textures away? If yes please explain why in the finest details if no do the same oh and can you provide links to a piece of law pointing this out.

[SaintNuclear]

I\'m not some lawyer and don\'t know that much about law, but I think you\'re not giving enough information.
* Is the company registered as a company anywhere?
* Is it cross-countries?
* Was it his name written as the copyright owner of the textures?
* Was he paid to make the textures, or \'gave\' them in any way?
* Was there a non-official contract \\ agreement of any kind?

Now, why would he want to know if the textures belong to him or the company? So they\'ll lose the textures and be peanutted, so he can use them in another company, so he can sell them, or what?
It\'s actually important, because if he worked on them hard and he wants to use them, he might want to see if he can claim them as his. But if they don\'t matter to him that much, he might not want to even go into legal actions - it doesn\'t worth it.

[tygerwilde]

well, if he gave them the copyrights, then they belong to the company.

typically, it\'s a matter of was he getting paid to churn out material for the company. they paid him for the original material, so it became their property.

however, there are exceptions to the rules, if he claims copyright, he might win a case dependant on what his claims entail. say he claims he created them years before and was informed that he was simply being paid to give them licence to use the textures in their product. in that case, they would still have the right to use them in the product, but he would have final copyright and capability to use them as he sees fit.

copyright laws something that can be considered art are complicated, and I\'m having a bit of trouble learning them, but this kind of thing was covered last semester.

[edit] I knew copywrite was wrong, but I had to make sure.

[Watcher]

Yes it\'s a registered company.
Yes it\'s cross countried
It was the copyright sign with Merlord next to it
Voluntary work until they started to gain income.
I didn\'t sign anything at all.

I want my stuff back because I want to use them and show them on my site. I wouldn\'t really take it to court.

[SaintNuclear]

Well, if you \'gave\' them the textures, then it\'s their\'s.
Unless Merlord is you and you can proove it.

You can use it for no profit either way though.
And it\'s good that you don\'t want to take it to court as it\'s cross-countried. It\'ll be a pain to try and sue it out of them.

[Watcher]

He hasnt asked this but I am, define give?

[tygerwilde]

as an artist, he can use them in a portfolio aspect, some artist get away with using a website as a portfolio, they submit their material on their own private website, and refer people to that website to show their skills with manipulating graphics. you wanna be real careful about that one though, as it can be very tricky legally

[SaintNuclear]

Well, you can either let them use the textures, or give the textures to them.
If it was \'we pay you so you make textures for us\' it\'s a \'give\'. If it\'s \'we pay you so you let us use textures you make\' it\'s not a \'give\'.

A \'give\' is bad in this case.

[Watcher]

The \"great\" thing about the company is that they dint even need the textures, I know there leader he is a right S.O.B he is just doing it so he can be awkward.

PS the swearing in this post can be considered legit if you know this dude.
PSS Erg it took away my swear word and replaced it with peanuty

[tygerwilde]

no watcher, swearing isn\'t proper on these boards at all, a lot of us, including me still do it a lot, but we don\'t justify it.