Copyright

Copyright owners enjoy certain exclusive rights in relation to their creations. Your website will have copyright content on it and you should take measures to protect your rights by:

• obtaining an assignment or licence of the copyright in the material created by your website designers so you can control future website designs and amendments
• obtaining assignments of copyright or licences from third party consultants to use copyright material that they have created
• displaying the copyright symbol (c), the name of the author, year of publication and terms of use, particularly on pages where users are able to download or copy material from your website
• setting out in your general terms and conditions a statement that users of the website must obtain permission before copying, downloading or altering material from your website
• ensuring that access to material that is not for general public use, is only available to password holders or only after payment of a fee and acceptance of specific terms and conditions.

Your website might also contain or use third party copyright material which you do not own. You should take measures to protect yourself from infringing third party copyright rights by:

• making sure you obtain licences to use and reproduce the copyright material before you place the material on your website
• complying with any terms of use attached to the material
• ensuring that if you link your website to third party websites, you only do so in accordance with their terms and conditions.

You should also protect yourself from liability if those using your website infringe someone else's copyright (ie when posting material to your website) by:

• stating in your terms and conditions that you maintain authority to use and remove any material as you see fit without obtaining permission, that you are not responsible for the content of any posted material, and that under no circumstances are you authorising an infringement of copyright
• requiring parties posting to your website to indemnify you for any loss arising from copyright infringement
• ensuring that any infringing material is removed as soon as it is identified
• providing statements limiting your liability, where applicable.