Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, Third Edition
- A contribution to a collective work;
- A part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work;
- A translation;
- A compilation;
- A test;
- Answer material for a test;
- An atlas;
- An instructional text, which is defined as a “literary, pictorial, or graphic work prepared for publication and with the purpose of use in systematic instructional activities;” or
- A supplementary work, which is defined as “a work prepared for publication as a secondary adjunct to a work by another author for the purpose of introducing, concluding, illustrating, explaining, revising, commenting upon, or assisting in the use of the other work, such as forewords, afterwords, pictorial illustrations, maps, charts, tables, editorial notes, musical arrangements, answer material for tests, bibliographies, appendixes, and indexes.”
17 U.S.C. § 101 (definition of “work made for hire”).
506.2 Works Created by an Employee Within the Scope of His or Her Employment
The Copyright Act does not define the terms “employee,” “employer,” or “scope of employment.” The Supreme Court has held that Congress intended these terms “to be understood in light of agency law” and that the courts should rely “on the general common law of agency, rather than on the law of any particular State, to give meaning to these terms.” Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730, 740 (1989). Examples of factors that may be relevant to this inquiry include the following (although none of these factors is determinative):
- The skill required to create the work.
- The location where the work was created.
- The source of the instrumentalities and tools used to create the work.
- The duration of the relationship between the parties.
- Whether the hiring party has the right to assign additional projects to the hired party.
- The method of payment.
Chapter 500 : 19
12/22/2014
