17 U.S.C. § 201 — Ownership of copyright

(a) Initial ownership: Copyright in a protected work automatically belongs, from the start, to the person or people who created it — the "author" or "authors." If more than one person creates a work together as a joint work, they all co-own the copyright together. (b) Works made for hire: If a work is a "work made for hire," the law treats the employer, or whoever the work was created for, as the legal "author" — not the person who actually did the creative work. That employer or other party then owns all of the rights that make up the copyright, unless everyone involved signs a written agreement saying otherwise. (c) Contributions to collective works: When someone contributes a separate piece to a larger "collective work" (like an article in a magazine), the copyright in that individual piece is separate from the copyright in the collective work as a whole. The copyright in the contribution belongs, at first, to the person who created that piece. Unless that person expressly transfers the copyright, or specific rights under it, the owner of the collective work is only presumed to have gotten permission to reproduce and distribute that piece as part of that particular collective work, any later revision of it, or any later collective work in the same series. (d) Transfer of ownership: (1) Copyright ownership can be transferred, in whole or in part, through any kind of conveyance, or automatically by operation of law. It can also be left to someone in a will, or pass as personal property under the law that applies when someone dies without a will. (2) Any of the specific exclusive rights that make up a copyright — including any smaller piece of a right listed in section 106 — can be transferred the same way, and owned separately from the rest of the copyright. Whoever owns one of these particular rights gets all the same legal protections and remedies that a full copyright owner gets, but only for that specific right. (e) Involuntary transfer: If an individual author has never voluntarily transferred their copyright, or any of the exclusive rights under it, then no government body, official, or organization can validly seize, take over, transfer, or otherwise exercise ownership rights over that copyright under this title — except as allowed under the separate bankruptcy law, title 11.