Hi,

I am in the process of finishing an Excel application which is designed to help water authorities analyse the costs and implications of building new infrastructure for water supply and sewerage.

The application was originally meant to be just for my own use as I needed to perform an analysis for a project I am working on for a local (UK) council. However, now that I've finished it I believe it would be useful for other people carrying out similar work and so I was thinking of possibly selling it.

So, I have several questions:

1) Do I own the copyright on the actual application? I understand that MS own the copyright on Excel but what about any applications that are written in it? As far as I know the copyright on the actual application should automatically belong to the person who wrote it. Is this correct?

2) Do I need to register the copyright somewhere to make it official?

3) Can I legally sell the application, without infringing MS Excel copyright?

4) To make sure it is clear I own the program code, I was thinking of having a dialog box appear whenever the app. is opened. It would say something simple, such as "Copyright TheRobster 2004. All rights reserved." Would this be enough to cover myself from a legal stand-point if someone tried to steal/sell the app.?

I am in the UK so I don't know if UK law is different from other countries regarding this matter or whether it is the same world-wide.

Many thanks
-Rob