Here’s what you need to know about how work for hire could affect your business.
What Is Work for Hire?
Work for hire covers the legal ownership of copyrighted material. Generally speaking, when one entity (usually a business) hires someone (like an employee) to create something, then the work created belongs to the hiring entity, not the person who actually created it. Therefore, most work that an employee creates on the job is covered by work-for-hire law.
Alternate name: Work made for hireAcronym: WFH
How Does Work for Hire Work?
It’s important to understand work for hire before you hire a creative employee or contractor. Creative work is a common source of copyright disputes, so do all you can to ensure you’ve protected yourself. Put your understanding in writing and have the employee or contractor sign it before beginning the work.
How It Applies to Employees
The application of this concept is fairly simple when it comes to employees. For the most part, any work done by an employee is the property of the employer. For example, if an engineering firm hires an engineer to create software or hardware, the work-for-hire concept is in force, and the creations of the engineer are the property of the company. As long as the work is created in the scope of what an employee was hired to do, then it’s covered by work-for-hire law.
How It Applies to Commissioned Works
The concept of work for hire and ownership of work extends beyond work done by employees. Commissioned works—typically done by an independent contractor—are also covered by work-for-hire law. Since the contractor’s relationship with the company is more complex than the employee’s relationship, the legal text covering this aspect of work for hire is more specific. It states a number of circumstances under which work-for-hire law applies. The text of the law states that WFH applies to work specifically ordered or commissioned for use as:
A contribution to a collective workA part of a motion picture or other audiovisual workA translationA supplementary work (like an editorial note or illustration in someone else’s work)A compilationAn instructional textA testAnswer material for a testAn atlas
Work for Hire and Patents
The scenarios covered so far apply only to issues of copyright ownership. Issues of patent ownership are a little more tricky. Copyright law allows corporations to be the author of a copyrighted work, but corporations cannot be inventors (someone who creates a patented product). However, it gets even more complicated, because while corporations can’t be inventors, they can own patents. For example, a company could own a patent for a new kind of software product, but the inventor listed on the patent would be the actual person or people who created the software. The inventor assigns ownership of the product to the company, but they’re still acknowledged as the inventor. Both parties involved in the creation of patented works should be absolutely clear about who will own the patent before any work begins. This relationship should be clarified with both contractors and employees.
Why a Written Contract Is Necessary
The work-for-hire question is another reason why it’s important to put every agreement into writing. Unwritten assumptions can come back to bite you. Employees, in particular, don’t always understand the concept that their work is your property, so having them sign a contract helps make it clear who owns what. Employee ownership rights can be further expanded or restricted by an employment contract. Depending on the way you word the contract you give your employees, you could give them more rights than WFH covers. You could also make it abundantly clear in a contract that everything they do during work hours will be ultimately owned by the company; that ensures there won’t be any confusion about who owns what. This is also an example of why it’s so important to clarify the working relationship you have with people who work for your company. The line between an employee and an independent contractor can become blurry, and it sometimes comes down to a case-by-case basis. This can have profound impacts on your business, beyond copyright issues, so you must clarify the relationship with the worker in question.
