Originally Posted by Steve House

You are in error here. Microsoft owns the code because you are an employee working within the scope of your regular employment by Microsoft. Same for designing the cold-fusion device for Enron, you are acting within the scope of your regular employment duties. But videographers, photographers, and other creative professionals who are contracted to a client on a non-exclusive basis and paid to produce certain materials for him are NOT employees of the client - the simple fact of being paid to perform a professional service does not make one an employee. Now if the relationship is on-going and exclusive, with the "client" paying a wage in contrast to a professional fee, withholding taxes, directing the performance of the work, etc, it is another story. But an independent contractor engaged to produce a certain work is not an employee. He is a vendor selling a service and the client is his customer. It is like the relationship between you and your doctor or lawyer or the plumber who comes to your house to fix your pipes. The fact that you pay them for their services does not make them your employee, even for during the moments in which they are actively providing the service. Absent a regular employer/employee relationship where the creative person would be acting under the supervision of the employer within the scope of their normal, on-going duties as an employee, a work-for-hire relationship only exists if the contract between the producer and the client spells out in writing that it is so. If it's not specifcally defined in writing to be a work-for-hire, the 'author of the work,' not the client, owns the rights and what the client is paying for is a license to use the work.