Website content copyright

Okay, here's the deal. I run a website and I hired 4 people to become writers for the site. They completed a few articles in their short time at my site. Now three of them have left to make their own website, they want to take all their work with them. At the bottom of every page at our site we have a copyright notice that reads as such "All materials on this site including content, graphics, flash, ideas © Site-name-removed.com 2000-2001 and may not be copied without prior permission from administration."

Now this should mean that they cannot remove the work from my site and that they cannot use it on their own site, is that correct? The only valid reason coming from them at the moment is that they think that since they wrote it is is copyrighted to them, when it clearly states (and they knew that) that all content is copyrighted to my site.

Am I right in keeping the work and stopping them from using it at a future site? Thanks.

[HomeGuru]

It depends and is predicated on the fact of if the 3 hired people that left were your direct employees or just independent contractors. Was the website content created under an employer-employee or IC work-for-hire arrangement?

They worked under an employer-employee arrangement

can i get an answer please?

if they worked as your employees. You own all the rights.

[BelizeBreeze]

Originally Posted by Membrain

They worked under an employer-employee arrangement

That is NOT an answer.

How were they paid?
From where did they work?
Did they have a contract?
YOu know, were they employees or contractors? And if you don't know enough to know the answers, how the HELL do you expect an answer from us?

[divgradcurl]

In addition to what BB asked, what state are you in? Different states define "employee" differently -- although almost all of them require, at a minimum, that you pay their payroll taxes and give them a W-2 at the end of the year; if you gave them a 1099, they are not employees for the purposes at hand.