You hire a freelance designer to create your logo, pay the invoice, and start putting it on everything. Or you bring on a contract developer who writes the code behind your app. A natural assumption follows: because you paid for the work, your business owns it. In Canada, that assumption is often wrong. The phrase "work for hire" comes from United States copyright law, and Canada does not have an equivalent rule. Who owns the copyright in work created by an employee or an independent contractor turns on the Copyright Act, on whether the creator was an employee or a contractor, and on what your contract says in writing. This guide explains the default rules of copyright ownership in Canada and how to make sure your business actually owns what it pays for.
Does Canada have "work for hire"?
No. "Work made for hire" is a concept in United States copyright law, where a work created by an employee within the scope of employment, or certain specially commissioned works, can belong to the hiring party as a matter of statute. Canada's Copyright Act does not use that framework. It starts from a single default: under section 13(1) of the Copyright Act, the author of a work is the first owner of the copyright in it. The author is the person who actually created the work. Everything else, including the employee rule and any transfer of ownership to a business, is either an exception to that default or a contract around it.
Importing the United States "work for hire" assumption into a Canadian arrangement is a common and avoidable mistake. Treating a commissioned design, a piece of writing, or a block of code as automatically owned by the business that paid for it can leave the business using material it does not actually own, and relying on rights it does not actually have.
Who owns copyright in work an employee creates?
When an employee creates a work in the course of their employment, the employer is generally the first owner of the copyright, absent an agreement to the contrary. Section 13(3) of the Copyright Act sets this out: where the author was employed "under a contract of service" and made the work "in the course of his employment," the employer is the first owner unless the parties agreed otherwise.
Two conditions sit inside that rule. The creator has to be a genuine employee, working under what the Act calls a contract of service, rather than a contractor engaged for a project. And the work has to be made in the course of that employment, meaning it is part of what the employee was hired to do. A marketing employee who designs company brochures at work is on one side of the line; the same person writing a novel on weekends is usually on the other, and that personal project typically remains theirs.
The Act adds one specific carve-out worth knowing if you employ journalists or other contributors: for an article or similar contribution to a newspaper, magazine, or periodical, the author is, absent an agreement to the contrary, deemed to keep a right to restrain publication of the work outside that periodical. Because section 13(3) applies only "in the absence of any agreement to the contrary," a written employment agreement can confirm or adjust who owns what, which is the cleaner approach than relying on the default.
Who owns copyright in work a contractor or freelancer creates?
By default, an independent contractor or freelancer, not the business that hired them, owns the copyright in what they create, even when the work was commissioned and paid for. Because section 13(3) applies only to employees under a contract of service, it does not reach a contractor engaged under a contract for services. The general rule in section 13(1) governs instead, so the creator is the first owner unless they assign the copyright to you in writing.
This surprises people who recall an older rule. For many years the Copyright Act contained a special provision, the former section 13(2), under which whoever commissioned and paid for a photograph, portrait, or engraving owned the copyright. That provision was repealed in 2012 and no longer applies. Commissioned photographs and similar works now follow the same general rule as everything else: the creator owns the copyright unless they assign it in writing. Any guide still describing the commissioned-works rule is describing law that has been off the books for over a decade.
Paying an invoice is not the same as owning the intellectual property. Where a business commissions work, a court may find that it has an implied licence to use the work for the purpose it was commissioned for. A licence, though, is not ownership, its scope can be uncertain, and it may not let you modify the work, use it for new purposes, or stop the creator from reusing it. If ownership matters, the licence default is not enough.
| Who created it | Default copyright owner | How to change the default |
|---|---|---|
| Employee, in the course of employment (contract of service) | The employer, absent an agreement to the contrary (s. 13(3)) | Confirm or vary it in the employment agreement |
| Independent contractor or freelancer (contract for services) | The contractor who created the work (s. 13(1)) | A written assignment signed by the contractor (s. 13(4)) |
| You, creating it yourself | You, as the author (s. 13(1)) | Not applicable |
How to make sure your business owns the work
To own the copyright in work created by someone outside your business, get a written assignment signed by the creator. Section 13(4) of the Copyright Act provides that an assignment is valid only if it is in writing signed by the owner of the right, or the owner's duly authorized agent. A verbal understanding, an email saying "you own it," or simply paying the bill does not reliably transfer ownership.
A few drafting habits make assignments work the way you expect:
- Put the assignment in the contract before the work starts, not after a disagreement surfaces.
- Use present-tense assigning language so the transfer takes effect on creation, and consider a backup obligation to assign anything created later.
- Identify clearly what work and which rights are being assigned.
- Address any pre-existing materials the creator brings to the project, which are often handled through a licence rather than an assignment.
There is one more piece that an assignment alone does not cover. Transferring the copyright does not deal with the creator's moral rights, which are separate, personal to the author, and cannot be assigned. To modify, crop, or use the work without attribution, you generally also need a written waiver of moral rights. Clearview's guide to moral rights in Canadian copyright law explains why a waiver belongs in the same contract as the assignment.
Situations that complicate ownership
A handful of common scenarios deserve a closer look:
- Joint authorship. When two or more people contribute to a single work, they can be co-owners of the copyright, which affects who can license or assign it. Spelling out ownership in advance avoids later deadlock.
- Software and code. Development work is frequently done by contractors, so the contractor-owns-it default applies squarely. A SaaS business that relies on outside developers should make sure its contracts assign the code, a point Clearview covers in its guide to intellectual property protection for software companies.
- Pre-existing and third-party material. Contractors often build on tools, templates, or open-source components that carry their own licence terms. An assignment of the new work does not rewrite the terms attached to those underlying pieces.
What about patents and trademarks?
Copyright is one of several intellectual property rights, and the ownership defaults differ from one right to another. For patents, the inventor generally holds the initial right to the invention unless it is assigned. For trademarks, rights are tied to use of the mark and to the party that owns and applies to register it. If a contractor develops a patentable invention, or you are building a brand rather than a creative work, the ownership and assignment questions are similar in spirit but governed by different rules. Clearview's comparison of copyright versus trademark in Canada is a useful starting point for sorting out which right is in play.
Owning what you pay for
In Canada, paying for creative or technical work does not automatically make your business the owner of the copyright in it. Employees are the main exception, and even that turns on the work being made in the course of employment. For everyone else, ownership moves only through a written, signed assignment, and ideally a moral-rights waiver alongside it. Getting those clauses into your contracts at the outset is far simpler than untangling ownership after the work is done.
If you are putting agreements in place with employees, contractors, or agencies, contact Clearview to discuss contract drafting and the copyright law ownership clauses that fit how your business creates and commissions work.