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Who owns the intellectual property?

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chrissmith11

Junior Member
We hired a developer to build our website. Since we were friends, we did not have a "formal" agreement in place, thus my post.

We agreed to pay on a monthly basis of $X per month, until the balance was paid in full. We were late with a payment, and notified the developer that we would be. He claimed that we are in breach of contract, and now demands all of his money up front, and not adhering to our original contract.

We have since paid him the amount that was owed, to make our balance current, and even offered to advance him $$ to make up for our late payment. He has refused.

His refusal prompted him to access our server and lock up our site, without our permission, and we are now losing out on revenue, plus he never completed the project (missed our launch date), there are lots of bugs that need to be fixed, and he claims that we can not use any of the code until we pay him in full.

Is this true? Since we hired him to develop the code, and we own the idea and have paid $XX thus far for his work, is it in our legal right to refuse to pay any further, not accept his code (accept for the portion we have paid for), and move forward with it?

thnx

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? CA
 
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