[Radim]

I don't know what these acronyms mean, but I'd hate NOT being assigned full intellectual property rights, as a client hiring a freelancer.

Is that really common in your field? What's your field's price tag between doing full IP assignment vs. a license-only?

[brudgers]

   AEC = Architecture, Engineering, Construction
   AIA = American Institute of Architects

Architectural services are...well services, not products. It's not as if there is a copyright on a phone conversation or a drive to the project site, and it is not as if those things are incorporated into any artifact, e.g. a sketch for a new shed.

Assigning copyright in the US AEC industry carries additional complexity since architects and many of their consultants are licensed professionals and therefore are professionally liable for their designs. Part of the responsibility that comes with licensure is maintaining professional control of the design. By assigning copyright the architect and their consultants might maintain liability for its execution in contexts of which they are unaware, e.g. where soil conditions or sesmic loads differ from those on the site for which the building was designed. Legally architects cannot reassign their professional responsibility...that's what makes it professional.

An analogy in software might be Software as Service in particular and licensing in general. The Software industry already has retention of copyright as the common mode of agreement.

Going further, full assignment of copyright to the client just turns the problem around. If I assign the copyright to the design to a client, I need to obtain a license back in order to use similar parts and pieces in other projects, e.g. a detail for a door jamb or the profile and reinforcing of a footing or more directly the "drawings" that show them. Likewise a software engineer needs to be able to reuse foreach foo in bar without consulting a lawyer.

While there are exceptions, it's simply easier to negotiate a useful set of licenses without transfer of copyright than to include that in the negotiation. Functionally, if the client can do anything with the work except reassign copyright the vast majority of cases are well served.

The price of full assignment? The question correlates to a Kremlin on May Day with Brezhnev in the reviewing stand parade of red flags. Screening clients is critical.

[reboog711]

AEC usually means Architecture, Engineering, Construction.

I usually take it to mean the process of building buildings and making sure they won't fall down, but that may be oversimplified from someone who actually works in that industry.

[sethrin]

Work for hire does not generally apply to freelancers. Please see here for details: http://www.copylaw.com/new_articles/wfh.html

[k__]

If you create basic CRUD apps it is probably not so common.

But for anything more advanced it would be wise to have the option of using the software in other projects to save time and money.

[brudgers]

The option for reuse applies to both parties. Someone has to license use from the copyright holder with or without a transfer. In the case of software, the transfer is just an additional complication, by which I mean that the copyright to a Rails app is complicated by the license stack of Rails and the backend and other pieces. There's lots of pieces that the programmer doesn't hold copyright and therefore cannot assign it.

[Radim]

Indeed, but that sentence applies equally to either side of the contract!

Which is why I wonder what the "accepted standard" & "cost of giving up IP" is. I assume it varies greatly across domains -- OP's is "web development".