As a freelancer, who owns your work?

[nrv0us]

Especially interested in hearing from copywriters -- do you have a stipulation in your contracts about ownership of your work? If a client uses an idea of yours again and again, do you get a share each time?

Writer/editor here: whoooooof, IPR is an important part of a contract, definitely something to check carefully each time. Sounds like you might have had your fingers burnt? Query it, maybe it was something nobody foresaw. A lesson to us all. (In my case I sign away copyright, but sadly no one is likely to make a killing from my stuff and it's the normal course in my field)

Client always owns it, in my case. I get quite a lot of work helping clients do this, tbh - so I work with an agency, we come up with a campaign, then as part of what we do we create style guides, templates etc so they can go on developing the work themselves. However I'm in internal comms mostly, so this is fairly standard.

I'm a copywriter who always gives the copyright to my clients. I loathe the attitude that it isn't theirs to use as they wish.

It is helpful to point out that they do not own the copyright until the work is paid for. This can make them think twice about non payment or even late payment.

In my case, the copyright for the work is retained by the freelancer. However my company has the right to use it on a licence - exclusive for a period of time, then not exclusive - so it can make use of it how it wishes.

This tends to work well for both of us. Our freelancers can sell on really successful work (eg a photo taken for us may be purchased by the subject so the photographer earns twice by selling that again after the exclusivity period). And we can use what we need without worrying about it.