Personal Internet IP within Company Website

What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? - FLORIDA
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Hello, can anyone give me some pointers on how personal IP rights apply to content found on a company website?

My situation:

The company I work for has a website ( http://rsautospec.com/ ) and employees are permitted to have a section on the website " Staff Resources " that links to personal webpages, hosted on the company site or off. Stipulations are both must have content fits within board acceptance policy, which seems at this point to be related to automotive or mechanical " anything "....the site is about machining services offered for the automotive industry ).

Btw before I go on, I am a shareholder on the board and I was contracted to design and maintain the website for the company ( I have a web design business ). I pushed for inclusion of personal pages, but was a little bit disappointed in not having more leeway in what would be permitted in terms of content. Anyhow, I'm not sure that matters or not for this discussion.

Question 1 :

Can the corporate members ( majority vote ) stipulate what can or cannot be added to the letter? I'm thinking that the policy wishes to root out things like people putting up resumes or obvious content done that would harm image ( xxx, political commentary, religion, etc )?

Question 2 :

Is there any valid point in saying having a personal site hosted off the company server would free up "restrictions" in the above sense?

Question 3 :

Who owns the IP authored by employees in the designated " Staff Resources " , where that content is hosted on the site?

I would think the respective authors ( i.e. employees ). To give some introspective, this issue was really never touched upon in board meetings. Currently, the site lists a copyright notice at the bottom of the employee personal pages ( that are hosted by company server ) which implies that RSAutomotive is the copyright holder:

Example: http://rsautospec.com/FestivaTech/index.htm

The actual Terms of Copyright is what the board adopted from an old personal site I had. But when it was adopted for use, there was no consideration given to personal content on the site.

I say "personal" because none of the employee content so far ( at least from my own work ) was authored while acting in an employee's duty, i.e. being compensated for the authorship. Only my personal pages are up yet, but I expect others to follow suit. We aren't talking large amounts of employees, as it is small company.

Question 4:

Should each employee post their own copyright notice?

Thanks for any advice.

Short answer...

The company owns (or at least pays the rent on) the ip address space in which these pages reside and pays for the server that contains them. From your description, I assume that these are really sub-webs from the main corporate site. The company has complete responsibility for and therefore complete ownership of what goes on their site...including all sub-webs.

If the employees don't like that answer, they should get their own site.

OP,

your original post is kind of confusing, but here are some answers to your specific questions:

Can the corporate members ( majority vote ) stipulate what can or cannot be added to the letter? I'm thinking that the policy wishes to root out things like people putting up resumes or obvious content done that would harm image ( xxx, political commentary, religion, etc )?

Click to expand...

I assume that what you are asking is whether or not the company can stipulate what is included in a website that is linked to the main corporate webstie via the "staff resources" page. If that is the case, then of course they can stipulate the content of linked sites -- they have complete control over who and what they want their corporate site to link to.

If you don't like the restrictions, don't link your website to the corporate page.

Is there any valid point in saying having a personal site hosted off the company server would free up "restrictions" in the above sense?

Click to expand...

Sure, you are free to put up any old type of website you want on your own server (or on your own hosting service). But that doesn't mean the company has to let you link your site to their site.

Who owns the IP authored by employees in the designated " Staff Resources " , where that content is hosted on the site?

Click to expand...

Tough call. If the IP is authored while the employee is working or is otherwise on company time, then the company probably owns it. If the IP was authored during an employee's off hours, then ownership will likely remain with the employee, unless there is some contractual arrangement to the contrary.

Simply having the company host the site is insufficient to give the company ownership unless the IP was created on company time or unless there is a contractual agreement that gives the company ownership of the IP in exchange for the hosting.

Should each employee post their own copyright notice?

Click to expand...

They can if they want to, but this is irrelevant to the questions as to who owns the IP, or who has control over it.

The bottom line is this: if the company wants to restrict the content of material that it links to from its web site, it can. If you don't like the restrictions, don't link to the company website.