Company withholding payment - freelance issue

[Eloise01]

Re: Company withholding payment - freelance issue

I hesitate to suggest it:fear:but I think you may be incorrect there ....x

Suggest away - I have been saying all along that this isn't my area of law! But I do know that if you take a photograph as part of your employment, the copyright, unless specifically excluded in contract, is the employers! Which sort of takes us back in the circle - the contract for services is the root of the copyright, and not guesses by us.

[MissFM]

Re: Company withholding payment - freelance issue

But would you call employment (:focus from the OP's point of view) a freelance commission for which he was never paid?

[Eloise01]

Re: Company withholding payment - freelance issue

I do not call it anything because I have not read the terms of the (not employment) contract, except frustrated (and I mean that legally) because an insolvency got in the way! This is not a simple case of X said they would do Y for Z and Z didn't pay. The law wiped the debt because "Z" is dead! But that does not invalidate the contract - all it means is that the pay wasn't recieved and won't be. Go back to Cleverclogs bricks. You can't just swipe them back!

I fear to say it, but we are flogging a dead horse here! There is only one option here and that is detailed legal advice from one or more specialists in the area, and that will probably cost more than the amount owed. Possibly for nothing. The only thing that I can definitively advise is that the OP does not take the law into their own hands.

[MissFM]

Re: Company withholding payment - freelance issue

Can you see no way that the OP can get a fair price for the work he's done then (not just legally frustrated lol)?

[CleverClogs]

Re: Company withholding payment - freelance issue

Well CC - you should have had editorial control, given permission and so forth...

The accompanying text in Woodworker was, as usual for me, lightly "breathed upon" by the editor whilst travelling home by Tube. When it was published again - following a few more changes by me - the editor of those magazines made no changes whatever.

[CleverClogs]

Re: Company withholding payment - freelance issue

That;s different - licensing gives a degree of control. I have also sold photographs and they are copyrighted to me. But that is stated as part of a legal contract of publication rights. It does not mean that every photograph you have taken has a copyright.

Yes, it does.

Look at the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 - link

[CleverClogs]

Re: Company withholding payment - freelance issue

if, like me for example, your living comes partially from royalties from reproduction (cue a CC quip!)

You are indeed most fortunate; I am sure nobody would pay me to reproduce.

it does actually amount to theft if people do it without your permission (and make money out of it without paying you)

But it is not "copyright theft", but "theft" (or loss) of possibilities for pecuniary advantage.