Who Owns the Copyright When You Hire a Freelancer?

Most clients assume that paying for work means owning it. Under copyright law the starting point is usually the opposite. The person who creates the work owns it, and money changing hands does not alter that.

This matters more than it sounds. Without the right paperwork you may not be able to register your logo as a trademark, sell your company’s software cleanly, or stop the designer from reselling a near-identical layout. Investors and buyers check this during due diligence, and gaps are expensive to patch years later.

The default rule: the creator owns it

United States

The author owns the copyright from the moment the work exists. The big exception is the “work made for hire”, where the hiring party is treated as the author. According to the US Copyright Office’s Circular 30, that only happens in two situations: work by an employee within the scope of employment, or a commissioned work in one of nine listed categories, with a written agreement signed by both sides that expressly calls it a work made for hire. Everything else stays with the freelancer unless they assign it. Transfers of ownership must be in writing and signed (17 U.S.C. § 204(a)).

United Kingdom

Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 the author is the first owner, and only works made by an employee in the course of employment belong to the employer. Contractors keep the copyright. Section 90(3) adds that an assignment “is not effective unless it is in writing signed by or on behalf of the assignor”, according to the legislation.gov.uk text.

Germany

Here the copyright itself can never be transferred, except by inheritance (§ 29 UrhG). Clients receive usage rights under § 31 UrhG, either non-exclusive or exclusive, which can be limited in territory or duration and restricted to certain uses. If the contract does not list the uses, § 31(5) says the shared purpose of the contract decides. Anything that purpose does not require stays with the creator.

Criterion	United States	United Kingdom	Germany
Default owner	freelancer	freelancer	freelancer, permanently
How the client gets rights	assignment or work made for hire	assignment	exclusive usage licence
Signed writing required			only for unknown future uses
If the contract is silent	implied licence at most	implied licence at most	rights limited to contract purpose
Moral rights	narrow, mainly visual art	waivable in writing	cannot be waived in full

Why “work made for hire” often fails for freelancers

Many US-style templates rely on one line: “all work is a work made for hire”. For a freelancer that line only works if the work falls into one of the nine categories, such as a contribution to a collective work, part of an audiovisual work, a translation or an instructional text. Logos do not fit. Neither does a typical web app.

If the category does not match, the clause has no effect and the freelancer still owns the work. That is why careful contracts add a fallback: to the extent anything is not a work made for hire, the freelancer hereby assigns all rights to the client. Note the word “hereby”. An assignment that happens now is stronger than a promise to assign later.

There is a second, slower trap in US law. Under 17 U.S.C. § 203, an individual author who assigned rights can terminate that assignment during a five-year window that opens 35 years after the transfer. Works made for hire are exempt. For most software this is academic. For a logo that becomes a long-lived brand it is not.

Germany has its own version. Under § 40a UrhG, an author who granted exclusive rights for a one-off fee may exploit the work elsewhere after ten years, and your licence becomes non-exclusive. The exception that matters for logos: if the work is intended for use as a trademark or design with the author’s consent, exclusivity can be agreed without time limit (§ 40a(3) no. 3). So write the trademark purpose into the contract.

Software needs two extra clauses

Copyright in code works like copyright in anything else, with two practical wrinkles.

First, ownership is useless without the source. Your contract should require the freelancer to commit source code and documentation to your repository as they go, not hand over a zip file at the end. German law is no shortcut here: the rule that gives employers the rights to software (§ 69b UrhG) covers employees only, so a freelancer contract has to say it explicitly.

Second, no project is built from scratch. Open-source libraries come with their own licences, and you only get what those licences allow. Ask for a list of third-party components and their licences. Copyleft licences such as the GPL can impose conditions on your own code if you distribute the software, and you want to know that before launch, not during an acquisition.

A clause you can adapt

This is an illustration, not vetted legal text:

All deliverables are works made for hire to the extent permitted by law. To the extent any deliverable is not a work made for hire, the Contractor hereby assigns to the Client all right, title and interest in it, including all copyright, worldwide and for the full term of protection, effective on receipt of full payment. Where assignment is not possible under applicable law, the Contractor grants the Client an exclusive, perpetual, worldwide, transferable and sublicensable licence covering all forms of use. The Contractor waives moral rights to the extent permitted by law. The Contractor may show the deliverables in a portfolio after the Client’s public launch.

Tying the transfer to full payment is common and fair to the freelancer. It costs you nothing as long as you pay on time.

What to sort out per type of work

The IP clause is one part of the agreement. Our list of what to include in a freelance contract covers the rest. If you commission German designers or photographers, check the artists’ social insurance levy, which can apply to their fees. And settle rights even for a paid test project, since you may want to keep what comes out of it.

Teams that would rather have software built by one accountable provider, for example a studio like OnlineBuilders, should check the same points in that contract.

Next step: pull the contracts for your three most important freelance jobs and look for a signed assignment or exclusive licence. If one is missing, ask for a short confirmatory assignment now, while the relationship is good.

Questions people ask

If I paid in full, do I own the code?

Not automatically. Payment gives you at most an implied licence to use the work for the purpose it was commissioned for. Ownership needs a signed assignment, and source code delivery needs its own clause.

Can a freelancer show my project in their portfolio?

Only if the contract allows it or you agree. A common compromise is portfolio use after public launch, with an opt-out for confidential work. Spell it out, because an exclusive assignment otherwise leaves the freelancer with no rights at all.

Is a work-made-for-hire clause enough for a logo or website?

Usually not. Logos, websites and most software do not fit the nine commissioned-work categories in US copyright law, so the clause may simply fail. Add a fallback assignment of all rights to the extent the work is not a work made for hire.

What about moral rights?

In the UK moral rights can be waived in writing. In Germany they cannot be given up entirely, but you can agree on how attribution works, for example no name credit on a corporate website. In the US moral rights are narrow and mainly cover certain works of visual art.