Blog · By Rea Hailley, Co-Founder
How to Get Your Code Back From a Development Agency
If your contract gave you intellectual property ownership, the code is legally yours even if you cannot currently access it. Getting it back is a process of documentation, written requests, and, when necessary, legal pressure. Do not pay anyone who promises a fix before seeing what exists. Here are the steps, in order.
Step 1: Gather everything you have
Before any conversation, collect your contracts, invoices, emails, code repository access, login credentials, hosting accounts, and any deployed version of the app. The more access you can recover on your own, the more of your investment can be saved, and the stronger your position in every conversation that follows.
Step 2: Find out what you legally own
In Canada and the United States, a contractor retains ownership of code they write unless a contract explicitly says otherwise. Read your contract for an IP assignment clause: language that says the work created for you is owned by you. If it is there, the agency is holding property that belongs to you. If it is not, you still have options, but you need to know that before you negotiate. Our Protecting Your IP guide explains what to look for.
Step 3: Ask in writing, specifically
- A complete copy of the source code repository, including its history
- Transfer of the repository to an account you own, not just access to theirs
- Credentials and ownership transfer for hosting, domains, and databases
- Any documentation, design files, and third-party service accounts tied to the build
Email, not phone. You are building a paper trail. A professional agency will comply. Stalling, vague answers, or new invoices for "transfer fees" that appear from nowhere tell you what you are dealing with.
Step 4: If they refuse, get legal advice before you pay anything else
Do not keep paying invoices in the hope that cooperation will follow. If any of the warning signs on our IP page apply to you, stop. A lawyer's letter citing your IP assignment clause resolves many of these standoffs quickly, because the agency knows it is holding your property.
Step 5: Make the next build different
Whoever builds for you next, follow the 5 steps to protect your IP: an IP assignment clause, an NDA before conversations begin, every account registered to you, codebase access at all times, and a mid-project audit. This entire situation is preventable in the contract, before a single line of code is written.