Ownership of work for hire?

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Dan Farzad

well patrik that's what happen,
little by little their files are being deleted. I offered them that i will make a back up HD with everything BUT i will be the only sole company accessing this HD and it will not leave my office all i will charge you is the price the of the HD. They were offended! LOL
I know the director after 2 years an absolute perfectionist to the max level i be you for the level of the work he wants and for the amount of work he will put anyone under no one will give them the product i gave them and if they do i would loooooooove to see the bill.

I'm glad i'm learning this stuff and improving my contracts little by little. for a 23 year old in business (officialy) for 8 month i'm doing pretty well thank g-d.

Your project file is only a tool, not really much different from handwritten editing notes and of little intrinsic value. But the original footage is another matter. Delete the workfiles as you see fit, but if you're smart I'd strongly suggest you make sure you hang on to the camera originals.

[Dan Farzad]

are you reffering to the tapes?
they will probabely want the shots back in raw tpaed format.

[Laudon Williams]

Not a lawyer, blah blah blah.

I've been a consultant for many years and have written more service contracts than I could count. In most situations, if you are paid by someone to do work for them (work for hire) they own the work. Typically you have to disclaim this if you don't want this to be the case. There are lots of variations (limited use licenses, license fees, etc.).

Now, with that said, work for hire is typically hourly. If you were paid per project, you most likely only owe them what they asked you to produce, not the artifacts developed as part of the production process. If they paid you per hour, they could probably make a case for work for hire.

See the "not a lawyer" disclaimer above...

-Laudon