Copyright in Poland - Have to pay copyright for a design.

Hi. I am just wondering about copyright in poland.
I paid a design company to design a website and some documentation for me. An additonal charge is a Copyright fee. This allowed me to use the design. i was a bit surprised by this. As i had paid them to do the initial design work, i would not have to pay extra.

Does anyone know if this is normal?
Regards,
vincent

When my website was designed in Poland, they told me i had to pay extra not to have their logo put on the site. They also labelled that as copyright so i think that ios wht they mean here

As far as I know, it's quite normal in the design world for them to keep hold of the copyright of the design - the idea is that you're buying the design and the functionality, but not the actual copyright. This is probably where the copyright fee comes in - without it, you wouldn't be allowed to alter it/etc freely.

But - one thing. If you haven't paid it already, run the website through validator.w3.org. If it isn't *perfect*, then tell them to sort it out :)

this has noting to do with Poland, but with international copyrights. They did what they need to do as a business - make as much money as they can. The rules have a few ifs and and buts but these are some basics:

- if a person creates a work as an employee then the employer automatically holds the copyrights

- if a contractor creates work then the contractor holds the copyrights, unless specified otherwise in the contract.

Ok. thanks for all that. just wanted to make sure they werent pulling a fast one...or should i say, that they weren't pulling a fast one that they dont normally pull.

vincent