Who owns the copyright in work created by an employee or contractor for my Ontario business?

Under the Copyright Act, the default rule turns on the nature of the relationship, not who paid for the work. When an employee creates work in the course of their employment, the employer is generally the first owner of the copyright without needing a separate written assignment, unless the employment contract says otherwise.

Independent contractors are different: absent a written agreement transferring ownership, a contractor who creates work for you generally keeps the copyright in what they create, even though you paid for it, and you may only have an implied licence to use it for the purpose you hired them for. This surprises many business owners who assume that paying for a logo, website, or software means they own it outright. The safest approach for any contractor relationship is a written agreement that expressly assigns copyright in the deliverables to your business, since copyright assignments must be in writing to be valid. Reviewing existing contractor agreements for this gap before it becomes a dispute — before a sale or licensing deal, for example — is one of the more common due-diligence issues Ontario businesses run into.