It’s worth it for anyone trying to run a small business to understand this term, since you are likely to be on both sides of a work-for-hire contract at some point in the life of your business.

Work-for-hire essentially means that the rights to the work done by a contractor are ceded to the hiring company, as if the contractor were a full-time employee of that company.  In a work for hire situation, any code or art developed in the process of working on the contract is property of the hiring company.

In many cases, a graphic design firm or a programmer will want to keep the rights to things they produced in the process of working on the contract.  Often, designers will have clauses that would allow them to get residuals based on the creative work that they have done, or they retain the rights to a particular logo (licensed to the hiring company) so that the company must return to that designer for modifications.

My experience in the game industry is that most small contracts are work-for-hire, though programmers often require clauses in their contracts that allow them to keep rights to the code they produce.  This contrasts with the web, in which designers and programmers often will not work in work-for-hire situations.

In any case, there are a number of sample work-for-hire contracts out there.  Here are a few.

In addition, here is a recommended graphic design contract (not work-for-hire) that can be customized for individual needs.

Just remember that work-for-hire means that the contractor gives up all right to their work, and they should be compensated accordingly.

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