I was just in a very similar position, and I can assure you that the wording of your verbal agreement really counts. The laws are different across countries, and vary with the price of your lawyer, but essentially if he ever said "You write me a program and I'll give you some money" then you've probably agreed to hand over ownership and it's nothing to do with you how many sites they run with it, or if they sell it. Since this is a normal model of software development you would have to be very specific and say "You will fund the development and I will grant you a license to use it" if you wish to depart from the norm.

However in practical terms you have a lot of power as the sole coder, and you can probably leverage that to your advantage (maybe on a maintenance contract or something).

Some gentle code obfuscation would probably help your position later on as well.

In my case I developed a CGI/TCP server combo to control multiple servers from the web. I walked away with the rights to the software in return for 6 months free maintenance, some more development (ouch) and he gets "first option" if I ever choose to sell it. I got to 'cohost' my devel machine at their premises and run a few other things that I want on it.

As part of the negotiations he brought a lawyers interpretation of the situation and the basic upshot was that I was in trouble unless I could talk it out.

____________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.

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