Who owns the work when you hire a freelancer?
You hired a designer. You wrote the brief, you approved the drafts, you paid the invoice. You own the logo.
Probably not.
The default rule runs against you
Under U.S. copyright law, copyright vests initially in the author — the person who actually created the work. Paying someone doesn't transfer that. Commissioning it doesn't transfer that. Being the one with the idea doesn't transfer that. Absent something in writing, your freelancer owns the copyright in what they made, and what you've bought is, at best, an implied license to use it for roughly the purpose you commissioned it for.
That's usually fine right up until it isn't. It becomes a problem when you want to modify the work, use it somewhere new, register it, license it, enforce it against a copycat — or when an acquirer's diligence asks for your chain of title and you don't have one.
"Work made for hire" is much narrower than people think
Nearly every contractor agreement contains the phrase "work made for hire," and in a large share of them it does nothing at all.
Work made for hire is a defined statutory term with exactly two routes. The first: a work prepared by an employee within the scope of employment. A genuine W-2 employee, not a contractor you call a team member.
The second route is the one people rely on, and it's narrow. A specially ordered or commissioned work qualifies only if there's a signed written agreement and the work falls into one of nine enumerated categories: a contribution to a collective work, part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, a translation, a supplementary work, a compilation, an instructional text, a test, answer material for a test, or an atlas.
Read that list again, because of what isn't on it.
Software isn't on it.A standalone logo isn't on it.Most photography isn't on it.A standalone illustration isn't on it.
So when your developer agreement says the code is a work made for hire, that clause is doing nothing, because code isn't one of the nine. Same for the logo your brand designer made. The words are there; the legal effect isn't.
What actually works
A present-tense assignment. Not "will assign" — a promise to do something later is a promise you may have to enforce later. You want language that transfers ownership at signing: Contractor hereby irrevocably assigns to Company all right, title and interest in and to the Work.
Good agreements pair the two, so the assignment catches everything the work-for-hire clause misses: the work is a work made for hire, and to the extent it isn't, the contractor hereby assigns it. That belt-and-suspenders construction is standard for a reason.
Get it signed before work starts. Retroactive assignments are possible and we paper them regularly, but your leverage is never higher than before the invoice is paid. Once the relationship has soured or the freelancer has moved on, "please sign this" becomes a negotiation.
Deal with moral rights for visual art. Certain works of visual art carry rights of attribution and integrity that survive the transfer of copyright. If the work is a painting, sculpture, or limited-edition print, address a written waiver.
Ask what they brought with them. Designers reuse assets. Developers reuse libraries. If the deliverable contains pre-existing material the contractor owns or licensed from someone else, an assignment of "the Work" may not reach it. You want a license to anything embedded that they're not assigning outright.
The question worth asking today
Look at whatever your business is actually built on — the logo, the site, the app, the photography, the copy. For each one, can you point to a signed document that assigns it to you?
If the answer is a purchase order and a friendly relationship, that's a gap. It's cheap to close now and expensive to close during a financing, an acquisition, or an infringement fight, which is exactly when everyone discovers it.
Sources: 17 U.S.C. §101 — definition of "work made for hire" · 17 U.S.C. §201 — ownership of copyright