What is the significance of authorship?
In general, the author is the first owner of the copyright in a work. There is, however, one vital exception to this rule, and that is where an employee creates a copyright work in the course of his employment: in that case, the copyright belongs to the employer, unless there is some agreement to the contrary. This exception only applies to employees though, and does not apply to freelancers. Therefore I advise businesses which traditionally engage a lot of freelancers that they must make sure that the freelancers are engaged under written contracts which provide expressly that the employer owns the copyright in any works created by the freelancer.
