According to the accepted response in this question, when one hires a freelancer, the freelancer owns the copyright to whatever work they produce, unless the copyright is explicitly transferred to the buyer via a valid contract. If one wants to own the copyright to a given work and does not want to go through the hassle of writing up a full blown contract every time he hires someone on Fiverr/Freelancer.com, what is the easiest/fastest way to ensure that he obtains full ownership? If the buyer simply puts a message in the chatbox that he is hiring as "work for hire" is that enough? If yes, must the message be added before the project is accepted or anytime before payment is made is enough? What if the buyer forgot to include the message but wishes to do so before payment is released, would that work?
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Explicit contract
Work for hire is only one way to get a copyright from an artist, but Work For Hire does not work for every type of art or work. Work for hire has to be noted in the contract for the work.
The other way is having the artist sign a copyright transfer, specifically worded to transfer any transferable right to the buyer. In some jurisdictions such a transfer would be called an "exclusive, unlimited license" as for example in germany, the actual "Urheberrecht" (~authorship; which is often translated to copyright), isn't transferable, but all the "verwandte Rechte" (related rights), including usage and exploitation rights can be licensed away. The benefit of such a transfer is, that it works for things, Work for Hire can't be applied to.
Trish
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