Author accreditation in the US[edit]
Accreditation has no impact on work for hire in the US. The actual creator may or may not be publicly credited for the work, and this credit does not affect its legal status. States that are party to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works recognize separately copyrights and moral rights, with moral rights including the right of the actual creators to publicly identify themselves as such, and to maintain the integrity of their work.[2]
For example, Microsoft hired many programmers to develop the Windows operating system, which is credited simply to Microsoft Corporation. By contrast, Adobe Systems lists many of the developers of Photoshop in its credits. In both cases, the software is the property of the employing company. In both cases, the actual creators have moral rights. Similarly, newspapers routinely credit news articles written by their staff, and publishers credit the writers and illustrators who produce comic books featuring characters such as Batman or Spider-Man, but the publishers hold copyrights to the work. However, articles published in academic journals, or work produced by freelancers for magazines, are not generally works created as a work for hire, which is why it is common for the publisher to require the copyright owner, the author, to sign a copyright transfer, a short legal document transferring specific author copyrights to the publisher. In this case the authors retain those copyrights in their work not granted to the publisher.
Copyright duration[edit]
United States[edit]
In the United States a "work for hire" (published after 1978) receives copyright protection until 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever comes first. This differs from the standard U.S. copyright term, life of the author plus 70 years, because the "author" of a work for hire is often not an actual person, in which case the standard term would be unlimited, which is unconstitutional.[11] Works published prior to 1978 have no differentiation in copyright term between works made for hire and works with recognized individual creators.
European Union[edit]
In the European Union, even if a Member State provides for the possibility of a legal person to be the original rightholder, then the duration of protection is in general the same as the copyright term for a personal copyright: i.e., for a literary or artistic work, 70 years from the death of the human author, or in the case of works of joint authorship, 70 years from the death of the last surviving author. If the natural author or authors are not identified, nor become known subsequently, then the copyright term is the same as that for an anonymous or pseudonymous work, i.e. 70 years from publication for a literary or artistic work; or, if the work has not been published in that time, 70 years from creation.[12] (Copyright durations for works created before 1993 may be subject to transitional arrangements.)[13]
An exception is for scientific or critical editions of works in the public domain. Per article 70 of the German copyright law, editions as the result of scholarly or scientific analysis have a copyright length of 25 years. Therefore, the editor of an urtext score of an opera by Beethoven would only receive 25 years of protection, but the arrangement of the full orchestral part for piano would receive a full 70 year protection – timed from the publication of the piano arrangement and not the death of the editor. Editing is a proper work-for-hire activity.
Copyright codes of various countries pertaining to Work For Hire: