Paying for it does not automatically make it yours
In many jurisdictions, including the UK, copyright in commissioned software can rest with whoever wrote it unless there is a written assignment. Businesses are usually surprised by this, at the worst possible moment.
So it goes in the contract rather than being assumed, and it applies to designs as well as code.
The four things in your name from day one
- The repository — your organisation, us invited as collaborators
- Hosting and infrastructure — your account, your card, us as a removable user
- Third-party services — payment provider, email, model APIs, all yours
- The domain, if we touch it at all
The test: if the relationship ended acrimoniously tomorrow, could you keep operating without our cooperation? If that needs a caveat, the arrangement is wrong regardless of who the supplier is.
What we keep
Generic components we have built across many projects — utility libraries, deployment scaffolding, an SMTP client — remain ours and are licensed to you perpetually for use in your system.
Anything embodying your specific business logic, rules, workflow or data model is exclusively yours. We write the distinction into the contract rather than leaving it to interpretation.
Open source, examined
Practically all software includes open-source components and that is normal. We provide the dependency list with licences at handover, so you know what is in it and what those licences permit.
Reconstructing that list later is expensive; producing it during the build costs minutes.
If you are already unsure about a previous project
Do not start with a legal letter. Ask politely, in writing, with a specific list: transfer the domain, add us as owner on hosting, sign an assignment, provide the repository.
Most suppliers cooperate. Resistance is itself the answer, and it tells you what to do about the relationship.