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Be careful. While a design firm can retain its copyrights by contract, the firm can just as easily give those rights away – by written contract. Is there a doctrine in the house? Part 3
D esign professionals are, traditionally, reluctant to give up ownership of their designs or drawings, including the copyrights. Several reasons exist for this.
First, retaining ownership is a way to secure payment from a client, by preventing use or copying of the drawings until payment is made; second, there is expanded liability with each use of a design, so that restricting use of the drawings to a single project is a way to limit liability; and, third, a design that has market value (especially in the residential sector) can be sold again to new clients, such that the designer of a hot-selling plan might reap rewards for a clever plan layout or aesthetic design beyond the initial client for whom it was prepared. Knowing just a bit about copyright law will help you protect yourself. WHAT IS A “WORK-FOR-HIRE” ANYWAY? The phrase “work for hire” refers to the doctrine in copyright law dealing with ownership and authorship of work created by an employee or an independent con- tractor. The doctrine dates to a 1903 U.S. Supreme
Court case holding that an employer owned the copyright to advertisements created by an employ- ee in the course of his employment. The concept is now codified in the U.S. Copyright Act. “While a design firm can retain its copyrights by contract, the firm can just as easily give those rights away – by written contract.” Section 201(a) of the Act provides that copyright ownership “vests initially in the author or authors of the work.” The “author” is generally deemed to be the person or party who actually created the work. But the Act carves out an important
William Quatman GENERAL COUNSEL
See WILLIAM QUATMAN, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER June 4, 2018, ISSUE 1251
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