Re: a question about software and the work for hire doctrine

On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, Helen Dunne <hdunne[_at_]mov.vic.gov.au> wrote:
>
> I am not familiar with the term 'work-made-for-hire'. It is perhaps
> associated with US copyright law. If you or anyone else has the time
> could I please have a definition or background to this phrase?

A "work made for hire" is--

     (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or

     (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. For the purpose of the foregoing sentence, a "supplementary work" is a work prepared for publication as a secondary adjunct to a work by another author for the purpose of introducing, concluding, illustrating, explaining, revising, commenting upon, or assisting in the use of the other work, such as forewords, afterwords, pictorial illustrations, maps, charts, tables, editorial notes, musical arrangements, answer material for tests, bibliographies, appendixes, and indexes, and an "instructional text" is a literary, pictorial, or graphic work prepared for publication and with the purpose of use in systematic instructional activities.

Llew Gibbons
<lgibbons[_at_]sprintmail.com> Received on Wed Apr 21 1999 - 12:40:28 GMT