If you provide creative solutions to your clients, make sure you carefully read the fine print and understand the full details of your legal agreement. It’s especially important for creative professionals to understand whether or not their deliverables are falling into the category of “Work For Hire.”
If you are providing Work For Hire, do you realize that everything you create belongs to your client? That is, you no longer have any ownership in your work and you cannot use it in your portfolio without permission. This works both ways. For those business owners who contract outside firms to handle creative work – including building a website – if you hire a company to build your site and create all of the content, unless you contract that company as Work For Hire, everything they create is legally theirs. If you should stop payment for any reason, the firm you hired can demand that you delete your website and block access to all of the curated content, leaving you stranded without a web presence.
If you are hiring a third party to create any content for you and are confused about who owns the content, seek the counsel of an attorney who knows the details of protecting intellectual property.
For more information regarding the risks of “Work For Hire” visit: http://www.stopworkforhire.com