Who Owns the Copyrights to Meta Data?
That depends on who created it and if you signed your rights away to an SEO company. If you created your meta tag data you own the copyrights. And, in most states if you hire someone under an "Work for Hire Agreement" to do SEO work for you, the copyrights are automatically yours.However, in some states, like California, a creator cannot even give you rights to SEO data created under a Work for Hire agreement unless you purchase workers' compensation and unemployment insurance for them, and you may also need to withhold taxes from any payments to them.
It is advisable to call your state department of insurance and ask about any insurance or other legal requirements for Work for Hire agreements in your own state.
If you turn your site over to an SEO company and sign a contract giving them the rights, or they have all copyrights by default under the law, you could be in serious trouble.
Read the Fine Print - Website Owners Beware
It is fairly common in the SEO industry for a company who does your SEO to ask for copyrights to any and all meta data and other SEO work they do on your site.These contracts usually require you to pay a monthly fee to continue using "their" meta data. If you terminate services, the company can strip all the meta data from your site that they created, edited, or even “analyzed.” Take these words seriously.
Courts Side With SEO Companies if You Sign Away Your Copyrights
There are at least several legal precedents where courts sided with SEO companies when copyrights were disputed. The law favors the idea that copyrights exists on material even when only a computer can read it, and therefore, if you give rights to your meta data to someone, they can take it off your site if you no longer wish to pay them a monthly rental fee.
I personally know of companies that paid thousands of dollars for (very bad) SEO work and thousands more for the monthly right to use the awful meta data created. When they canceled their monthly contracts, the SEO companies stripped their entire sites of all meta data. They even stripped tags they did not create because they analyzed and edited existing tags and therefore, had copyrights to that data, too.
Do Not Sign Away Your Copyrights to SEO Data
If at all possible, do not do business with anyone that insists on retaining copyrights to any and all meta data they create, edit, or analyze for you. If they retain or have this right assigned to them, they can legally bar you from using it and totally strip your site.
When you pay someone to optimize your site, including creating meta tags and data, you should not have to pay a monthly fee to continue using the very meta data you paid for.
Why Signing Copyrights to an SEO Company is a Mistake
On most websites meta data can be seen by anyone. Don't believe me? Right click your mouse while on this page and select “View Page Source.” There it is – the “secret” meta data for this web page.Meta data itself does not contain any “trade secrets.” It is a series of words and descriptions and other things that help your website perform.
Since meta data for your site should be unique, it is not really something you could use for another site. What really is there to protect? Only an SEO's ability to extort monthly services fees from you.
It is understandable a company would ask that you not share their techniques with others and have you sign a confidentiality agreement about work they do for you. But if you sign a contract for services without rights to the product (the SEO on your website) you could find yourself in serious trouble.
