It certainly enters into the picture. Next time the baker delivers a cake to
the house, demand the recipe.

Perry

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You don't understand copyright law.  Whatever you *do* doesn't change what's
been handed down by the courts and Congress (not to mention the Bern
convention).

The process you have described above is a classic "work-for-hire" example, as
long as the contract does not stipulate that rights remain with the
contractors.

Where the work is done or how it is done has no bearing on copyrights.  It
never has and it never will.

The paper publishing industry has long since established what constitutes
work-for-hire and those conventions have been applied to computer contract
work.  That's just the way it is.

The copyright belongs to the party that stipulates the copyright, unless the
work performed is "for hire", and work-for-hire is so easily defined I'm
surprised you really don't recognize it.  When a contractor writes software
for your firm, and the contract does not stipulate the copyright remains with
he contractor, and the nature of the work is unique to the contractor (i.e.,
s/he is not reusing her/his own code), it's a work-for-hire project.

Whatever understandings you have with your contractors won't hold up in court
if ever they find themselves facing a lawsuit from you.

Don't confuse IRS contractor rules with guidelines for copyright
preservations.  The two have nothing to do with each other.

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I take it you have not been on both sides of the fence.

If you have a renewable contract and never request that something be
provided to you in the past, you will find that it is difficult to ask for
it in the present. Contracts have two parts to them, the written part and
the part that comes from past dealings with the same contractor. When you go
to court to argue the point, the past dealings with the same contractor hold
a lot of weight and often becomes the tilting factor for one side or the
other. Again the result of your work for the company that hired you is what
you are required to provide to that company. What that result is depends on
the package that was negotiated in the contract tempered by what has been
provided in the past.

In contracting, the company does not have automatic rights to trade secrets
of the contractor no matter where they may ly.

Perry

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I do, but then we were not mentioning copyrights in this thread before.

What has been explained above is far from the norm, it is an example of
protecting yourself from the norm.

Again, we were not talking copyrights before, we were speaking simply about
writing a program for a company and if said company had rights to the
source automatically.

Actually you are missing something important here that applies strictly to
programmers, actually helps your case a little.

Again no one mentioned applying for a copyright. A lot of code gets written
that is never copyrighted.

It does, it has.

We are not speaking of just IRS contractor rules, the concept deals far more
than just IRS jurisdiction, I am surprise you don't recognize some of the
other reasons such as OSHA. The last one being one of the most important
since that is where the liability issues come in. By giving control of the
work area to the contractor by a lease and removing access of your own
employees from that work area you are limiting your responsibilities for
abiding by OSHA regulations involving interaction between your employees and
his. However to make this stick, the contractor has to control nearly
everything that involves what is now his property.

Perry

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Look at the subject line of the thread.

There was no protection for the contractor in your scenario.

Again, copyrights and who gets them is what the thread is all about.

Okay.  Please point it out.

All code is technically subject to copyright as soon as it's written, unless
it incorporates or violates existing copyrighted code.

Cite something, then.  This would be the first case I've heard of where that
happened, whereas every other case that's been made available for evaluation
has worked against the people who didn't take measures to protect themselves.

This does not impact directly on the topic of the thread.  The issue is
whether the contractor owns the code.  If the contractor is performing what is
defined as work-for-hire, the contractor does not own the code.

You're trying to be sneaky by changing the conditions of the discussion.  
Either put all your cards on the table (but try to stay in topic), or start a
new thread, or stop posting this nonsense, as you are distributing vague and
misleading information which could lead others to mistakenly think they don't
need to protect their rights in future contract negotiations.

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