Who Owns the Work You Paid Someone to Create

Paying for it isn't the same as owning it

Here's a fact that surprises most small business owners: if you hire an independent contractor to design your logo, build your website, write your copy, or shoot your photos, and you don't have anything in writing about ownership, the contractor generally owns the copyright. You paid for it. They own it.

What you have is usually an implied license to use it for the purpose you commissioned it for. Which covers a lot of ordinary use, and stops short of a lot of things you'll eventually want to do.

I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice. But this is common enough, and cheap enough to prevent, that every owner should know the shape of it.

Why the default works that way

Copyright attaches to the creator at the moment the work is made. There's a category called "work made for hire" where the employer owns it instead, and that's why work your actual employees produce on the job generally belongs to the business.

Independent contractors are not employees. For contractor work, that category only applies in narrow circumstances and, for most of them, only with a signed written agreement saying so. No agreement, no transfer.

Where it actually bites

The problem rarely appears at delivery. It appears later, when you want to do something new.

You want to put the logo on merchandise, and the designer says that wasn't what it was for. You want to redesign the website and reuse the photos, and the photographer's license was for the original site only. You want to hand your brand files to a new agency, and the old one won't release the source files. You're selling the business, and the buyer's attorney asks for proof that you own your own brand assets. That last one is where it gets expensive, and it's a real deal-slowing problem.

There's also the version where the work wasn't original in the first place - stock photos used outside their license, a font that wasn't licensed for commercial use, a template with restrictions. You inherit that exposure whether or not you knew about it.

Get it in writing, before the work starts

This doesn't require an elaborate contract. It requires one clear paragraph and the source files.

• Say ownership transfers to you on final payment. Plainly: all rights in the finished work become yours when the invoice is paid.
• Ask for the editable source files, not just the finished output. The layered logo file, the raw photos, the working document. Without these you own something you can't change.
• Have them confirm the work is original, or that any stock, fonts, or code they used is properly licensed for your use, and get a list.
• Settle portfolio rights up front. Most creatives want to show the work. That's usually fine and worth agreeing to explicitly.
• Cover the accounts too. Domain, hosting, and social accounts registered in your name, not theirs. Different issue from copyright, same category of regret.

If the work is already done

Don't panic, and don't ignore it either. Go back to the people who made your important assets - logo especially - and ask for a short written assignment. Most will sign one without argument; you're a past client and it costs them nothing.

Do it while the relationship is good. The time you'll want that signature is exactly the time when tracking down a designer from six years ago is hardest.

The bottom line

Commissioning creative work does not automatically transfer the copyright to you. Without something in writing, the contractor keeps it and you have a limited license.

One paragraph in the agreement, plus the source files, plus a confirmation that everything used was properly licensed. Do that at the start of every engagement, and go back and paper the important ones you already have.