Legal Question in Business Law in West Virginia

Re: Copyright question

Actually, this copyright issue could be handled a couple of different ways. She could maintain the copyright solely and license its use to you. Or you could hold the copyright since it would be considered "work for hire".

Re: Copyright question

The drawings become copyrighted as soon as they are made. They don't need registered to be copyrighted, but registering them makes it easier to protect the copyrights.

Since the artist is not your employee, the copyrights will naturally fall to the artist. However, you two could execute a written contract stating the the drawings are a work for hire; in which case, you would be the owner of the copyrights. However, your artist friend might not be too keen on that.

What you should probably do is have the artist execute a license agreement for you to use the drawings.

If the drawings are already made, then that is your only option, as the written contract making them a work for hire would need to be executed prior to the drawings being made.