United States Copyright Law is embodied in Title 17 of the United States Code.  Regulations pertaining to copyrights are in 37 CFR 201 et seq.

Every day for the next few days (if I can muster the time), I will be posting a smattering of relevant laws and regulations pertaining to copyright termination of transfer.  My first post is the definition of “work made for hire.”  This is contained in 17 U.SC. § 101.

A “work made for hire” is—

(1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment;

or

(2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. For the purpose of the foregoing sentence, a “supplementary work” is a work prepared for publication as a secondary adjunct to a work by another author for the purpose of introducing, concluding, illustrating, explaining, revising, commenting upon, or assisting in the use of the other work, such as forewords, afterwords, pictorial illustrations, maps, charts, tables, editorial notes, musical arrangements, answer material for tests, bibliographies, appendixes, and indexes, and an “instructional text” is a literary, pictorial, or graphic work prepared for publication and with the purpose of use in systematic instructional activities.