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Subject:Re: Article on Contracting vs Employee From:Scottie Lover <iluvscotties -at- mindspring -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Sat, 26 Feb 2000 16:36:46 -0500
At 04:23 PM 02/26/2000 -0500, Doug Isenberg wrote:
>... intellectual property ownership ... In general, ... the
>copyright in work prepared by an employee within the
>scope of his or her employment is owned by the
>employer under U.S. law -- but work performed by an
>independent contractor is owned by the independent
>contractor (absent an agreement/contract to the contrary).
This is unpleasantly true -- and many employers make it known that
anything written by any of their employees (even at home on a weekend)
belongs to the employer. That is one immediate advantage to changing jobs
every so often ... e.g., if you've only had one employer since college, he
is going to claim everything you've done as his property. However, if
you've had three employers in thirty years, neither can claim with absolute
certainty that something was written while you worked for them, so the
subject is very unlikely to even arise.
