[geoelectric]

AFAIK, work for hire is separate from being contracted as well. Unless things have changed in the last 10-20 years you can have a valid contract to spend time and deliver software without the copyright assignment that comes with WFH.

In fact, this was common practice for doing enterprise consulting to small businesses when I was doing it at the start of my career. You could frequently reuse layouts and components between jobs since it was mostly basic 4GL+RDB, and it was typical to have no work-for-hire clause at all or a very limited one excluding reusables; or to charge a higher price if the client insisted on the clause to cover redevelopment.

I believe this was also the model that early open source companies such as Cygnus (who I also worked for) was built on. Large companies paid us to port the toolchains to their systems, but I believe the copyright was retained by Cygnus (and presumably reassigned to the FSF).

If someone had work for hire in a separate agreement, and I was otherwise inclined to take the "wait until requested" route, I'd probably wait on returning it too. I don't think I'd sit on the contract that said I'd get paid though, and I'm sure they're usually combined. I just wouldn't point out the omission if I got a contract without one.