Does Your Employer Own Intellectual Property You Create?

Originally published on LegalZoom on January 26, 2022.

Intellectual property rights can be a concern for employees regarding works created or developed within the workplace context. In many cases, employees who create a product or develop an idea while on company time will find that they do not own the intellectual property rights to their creations.

Employees need to understand what intellectual property is, who owns the intellectual property, how the ownership of such rights is determined, and what impact their employment agreement might have on their specific intellectual property rights.

"The Copyright Act automatically assigns authorship to employers rather than employee creators or inventors in two specific situations," says Michele Martell, an intellectual property attorney who has counseled businesses from The Muppets to the WWE to Crayola, as well as many individual inventors and creators.