Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York

Re: Challenging Question for Copyright Pros

Generally, without a contract, a consulant that you hire will own the rights in work he creates on the job.

Re: Challenging Question for Copyright Pros

Had there been an agreement BEFORE the work was begun, your school would be the owner, as the consultant's part can be deemed to be "a contribution to a collective work". Such a contribution is one of the nine statutory classes that, with an agreement in advance, make up "a work made for hire". But since you had no advance agreement, the consultant probably owns all the material they contributed.

Re: Challenging Question for Copyright Pros

Oy, have you got a potential headache!

It took the U.S. Supreme Court to reconcile a question about copyright ownership in a situation where a client had commissioned an artist's work. The case was Community for Creative Non-violence v. Reid. The Court said that a Congressional amendment to the copyright law provided that even though the CCNV owned the copy of the work that they had paid for, the artist owned the copyright. That's because the artist was an "independent contractor" and not an "employee" and the work was not a collective work that might have qualified as a "work made for hire."

Hopefully, the situation you pose can be resolved by everyone sitting down together and working out a deal which documents the respective rights going forward.