11–20 of 36 posts
So if it's a work-for-hire relationship, IP automatically goes to the potential employer?
From the perspective of a machine, that makes a surprising amount of sense.
Ok, wait. I am somewhat confused by this article. It is from my (non-lawyer) understanding that intellectual property ownership generally default to the creator. This happens even in "independent contractor" type of relationships, from my understanding. In the case of an employee/employer relationship, on the other hand, IP generally lies on the employer. So if it's a work-for-hire relationship, IP automatically goes…
Ok, wait. I am somewhat confused by this article. It is from my (non-lawyer) understanding that intellectual property ownership generally default to the creator. This happens even in "independent contractor" type of relationships, from my understanding. In the case of an employee/employer relationship, on the other hand, IP generally lies on the employer. So if it's a work-for-hire relationship, IP automatically goes…
My general agreement with Reuters was I got paid a day rate plus expenses and they had the rights to the specific images I delivered. (For a typical NBA game, I might ship at most two images for the night.) Just for clarity, since Reuters is a fast-moving wire service, they don't want fifty images, it was left to the photographer to ship only a 'best' image so as not to clog the picture desk in DC with a massive stream of noise (imagine 20 NBA games in one night with 100 images each -- it makes editing on deadline a massive task, so the photographers were expected to only deliver what was actually needed.)
Things might have changed a bit; my last Reuters assignment was in 2002.
So, at least in photography, work for hire can be very expensive due to effectively having zero IP at the end of the job.
Ok, wait. I am somewhat confused by this article. It is from my (non-lawyer) understanding that intellectual property ownership generally default to the creator. This happens even in "independent contractor" type of relationships, from my understanding. In the case of an employee/employer relationship, on the other hand, IP generally lies on the employer. So if it's a work-for-hire relationship, IP automatically goes…
At least in my country the IP goes to the author, full stop. In employment contracts you then specifically transfer the IP to the employer.
Under California law all IP produced by an employee during their employment, that is within the domain of the employer's work product and regardless of where that work was produced, is by default owned by the employer. All IP produced by a independent contractor is owned by the independent contractor, you pay for their time not for their work product.
'Work for hire' clauses are used to simply and effectively move an independent contractor into the same category as employee with respects to the IP they produce. It does not do the same with respect to the independent contractor's compensation, or rights as employees.
Generally the 'work for hire' clause itself is entirely inflexible, it is other areas of the agreement that must be addressed to protect payment. Hollywood, for example, is run almost entirely under work for hire agreements and could not function without it.
You could certainly argue that writing software as part of a team is "a contribution to a collective work". What surprises me is how many startups are not even aware of at least including a "work for hire" clause when bring on software developers.
Sure, but even then if contributed code is part of a collective work, the copyright act still requires a work for hire agreement. Section 101 says: A “work made for hire” is— (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translati…
As is pointed out though, for non-employees (contractors) there's an enumerated list of categories that that can be applied to. Writing software isn't in there. Although software and a web site designs might be considered an audiovisual work in some cases. Games and multimedia software are clearly audiovisual works. Accounting software, maybe not. Backend scripts, probably not.
The second clause of the definition should probably be updated by Congress to reflect modern realities. However, as it has not been updated, an explicit copyright transfer is needed, or some form of licensing agreement. A lot of specialists for hire will insist on a license instead of an outright copyright transfers because they sure are not going to give away their core work permanently to one party, short of a buy out. With either a copyright transfer or licensing contract it doesn't need to be a work for hire, that issue is irrelevant, the contract is written to cover what you actually need.
Can somebody point me to a model contract that does what we all want it to do? There must be some good ones out there that we can use.
Can somebody point me to a model contract that does what we all want it to do? There must be some good ones out there that we can use.
Can somebody point me to a model contract that does what we all want it to do? There must be some good ones out there that we can use.
https://www.cooleygo.com/documents/
Adding Wilmer Hale, Orrick and Founders' Workbench
https://launch.wilmerhale.com/build/document-generator/ https://www.orrick.com/Total-Access/Tool-Kit/Start-Up-Forms http://www.foundersworkbench.com/
I think Clerky does this as well.
Documents just want to be free.
https://techcrunch.com/2015/01/10/documents-just-want-to-be-...