Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Employee or independent?
Were you an employee when you created the work? Did you do the work while
having taxes deducted? Did you have a supervisor? If so, the work belongs, and will
continue to belong, to your employer. You can certainly claim that you did the work,
and probably show a printed copy of it, assuming that trade or non-disclosure con-
tracts are not in effect. But you can't copy it, sell it to someone else, or adapt it for a
freelance job. If you want to use the work in a digital portfolio, you will need to get
permission in writing from your employer to do so.
A freelancer is considered an independent contractor if you use your own mate-
rials and computer, work at home (or not regularly at the client's office), set your
own hours, and get paid by the project, not by the hour. Unless there is a contract
stating otherwise, the freelancer retains copyright on the artwork, and the client sim-
ply has rights to use it. The nature of that use (how extensive and broad) should be
negotiated at the beginning of the project. The independent contractor has every
right to reproduce this type of work in portfolio form.
You (or your employer or client) can't have it both ways. If you want to retain
rights, you can't also get the benefits of employment—sick days, health insurance,
overtime, and so on. Conversely, your employer can't deny you these benefits by call-
ing you an independent contractor unless they also let you retain your copyright.
Work-for-hire
In a work-for-hire arrangement, an independent consultant is paid to design,
create, or produce something for a fixed sum, selling their rights to the work to the
person or company who pays them.
Work-for-hire is a growing problem for creatives, who can end up with large
chunks of their creative output belonging to someone else. An old-fashioned portfolio
—where one copy of a finished work was carried around, shown, and returned to its
case—almost never prompted a legal action. The existence of digital artwork—infi-
nitely and immediately duplicable—has changed that, and made the work-for-hire
provision in a contract an increasingly ugly by-product of doing business.
What qualifies a commissioned freelance project as a work-for-hire? A surpris-
ingly broad category of work:
• A contribution to a “collective work”
a large corporate website, a newspaper
or magazine, or an encyclopedia.
• So ething that's part of a otion picture or other audiovisual work like
character animation, modeling or lighting, or contributions to an interactive
CD or its storyboards.
• A translation, a test, or answer
aterial for a test.
• Instructional text
a textbook or training package.
