Work for hire

In copyright law, a work made for hire (work for hire or WFH) is a work that is subject to copyright and is created by employees as part of their job or some limited types of works for which all parties agree in writing to the WFH designation. It is an exception to the general rule that the person who actually creates a work is the legally-recognized author of that work.

In the United States and several other copyright jurisdictions, if a work is "made for hire", the employer, not the employee, is considered the legal author, or first owner of copyright. In some countries, this is known as corporate authorship. The entity serving as an employer may be a corporation or other legal entity, an organization, or an individual.

Work for hire is a statutorily defined term in United States law (17 U.S.C. § 101), and so a work for hire is not created merely because parties to an agreement state that the work is a work for hire.^[1]

The work for hire doctrine originated in United States copyright law, but similar principles have been adopted in the laws of other countries.^[2]