Hire Custom Software Development

Under U.S. copyright law, code a contractor writes for you is not automatically yours: a transfer of copyright ownership is not valid unless it is in a writing signed by the owner.

Hiring custom software development means paying a person or firm to build an application for your company. In 17 U.S.C. § 101, a "work made for hire" is a work prepared by an employee within the scope of employment, or, for specially ordered or commissioned work, one of nine listed categories where both sides also sign a written agreement saying so. Software is not named among the nine. Under § 204(a), a transfer of copyright ownership needs a signed writing.

This is a plain summary of the statute, not legal advice.

Section 204(a) says a transfer of copyright ownership, other than by operation of law, is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or the owner's authorized agent. A contract clause that assigns the code to your company is that writing.

Company E's founder had been given a download from the previous developer that did not contain everything. I worked with the developer to recover the complete source code before anything else could move forward. On my projects, you own your source code, hosting and accounts.

Company E's founder had hired a small firm that kept building the wrong things. He paid a designer for the interface and the firm built a different one. Updates broke what had worked, the developer disappeared for stretches, and the product was never finished. All he had was a desktop script.

Nobody was steering the work, so specifications were ignored and nobody noticed until it was too late.