Jason Shinn of the Michigan Employment Law Advisor had a great post entitled "Is your company making this mistake when it comes to employees and intellectual property?" The post centers on a lawsuit filed by an employee of Marvel Entertainment who claimed he created the Ghost Rider character back in the 1970s. With the recent success of the movies, video games and promotional products, the value of the character has increased substantially and the employee wanted his share.

Shinn’s post discusses how Marvel eventually won the lawsuit filed by the employee, but it wasn’t easy, and the case took four years to litigate.

The importance of written agreements with employees and contractors that create intellectual property cannot be understated. A case I will never forget involved the sale of a business. At the 11th hour a contractor claimed to own all the intellectual property a business owner was trying to sell. No agreements existed between the business owner and the contractor. Fortunately, we were able to negotiate a reasonable figure that the contractor would accept to allow the sale to go through but the lack of an agreement did cost the business owner money and almost cost them the sale.

So I wholeheartedly agree with Shinn’s advice:

In this regard, for companies that want to make certain they are the owner of a work – whether the work is created by an employee or independent contractor – the best advice is to require employees and independent contractors to execute an assignment and work-made-for-hire agreement at the outset of the relationship so that copyright ownership vest in the company.

Don’t wait until it’s too late. That’s a mistake you don’t want to make.