You paid for the app. You assumed that meant you owned it. Then you fired (or parted ways with) the developer, and now you’re wondering whether you actually have the legal right to the source code sitting in a repository you may not even have access to.
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The answer depends entirely on whether that developer was your employee or an independent contractor, and — more than anything else — on what your contract actually says. This guide walks through the rules, what to check right now if you’re in this situation, and how to avoid it happening again.
Quick Answer
If the developer was a W-2 employee working within the scope of their job, U.S. copyright law generally treats the code as a ‘work made for hire’ — you own it automatically, even without a written contract. If the developer was an independent contractor or agency, the opposite is true by default: they own the copyright to the code unless you have a signed written agreement assigning it to you. No assignment in writing means no ownership, regardless of who paid the invoices.
Employee vs. Independent Contractor: Why It Changes Everything
Under the U.S. Copyright Act, ‘work made for hire’ status is the legal mechanism that hands ownership to the employer instead of the person who actually wrote the code. For employees, this applies automatically to anything created within the scope of their job, so most companies own employee-written code even with just a basic employment agreement in place.
Independent contractors are a different story. Custom software isn’t one of the nine narrow categories of work that can be a ‘work made for hire’ by contractor agreement under copyright law, so that doctrine mostly doesn’t apply to freelance or agency-built code at all. Instead, ownership only transfers if the contract contains an express, signed copyright assignment — language stating the developer assigns all rights, title, and interest in the code to you. A vague clause promising to assign rights ‘in the future’ isn’t enough; courts have held that a promise to assign isn’t the same as an actual assignment.
Without that language, the default rule under 17 U.S.C. § 201 kicks in: the contractor owns the copyright, and you’re left with, at best, an implied license to keep using the software you paid for — not ownership, and not necessarily the right to modify it, resell it, or hand it to another developer.
What to Do Right Now If You’re Firing (or Have Fired) a Developer
First, pull the contract. Look specifically for a copyright or IP assignment clause, not just a ‘work made for hire’ label — if the developer was a contractor, the work-for-hire label alone may not hold up, but an explicit assignment clause usually will. If subcontractors were involved, check whether the agreement requires the developer to have gotten assignments from them too; ownership can’t flow to you if it never flowed to your developer first.
Second, secure access, separately from the legal question of ownership. If the code lives in a GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket organization you administer, remove the developer’s access and confirm ownership sits with an account your business controls, not a personal one. Also lock down connected systems: app store developer accounts, cloud hosting (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure), domain registrars, CI/CD pipelines, and any API keys or environment secrets they had access to. Rotate credentials for anything they touched.
Third, if there’s no written assignment and the developer won’t cooperate, you may need to negotiate a buyout of the rights or, in a dispute, involve an IP attorney — this is a contract and copyright question, and outcomes depend heavily on your specific agreement and jurisdiction.
Tips and Common Mistakes
Don’t rely on a handshake deal or a Slack message saying ‘yeah, it’s yours.’ Copyright assignments must be in writing and signed to be enforceable — a verbal or emailed agreement to assign rights later generally isn’t sufficient.
Watch for open-source licensing baked into your app. Even with full copyright ownership of the custom code, third-party open-source libraries carry their own licenses (MIT, GPL, Apache, etc.) that govern how you can use, modify, or redistribute the parts built on them.
Set up admin accounts under your company’s identity, not the developer’s personal email, from day one — for repos, hosting, domains, and app store listings — so access isn’t a negotiation when the relationship ends.
For future projects, use a contract with an explicit present-tense assignment (‘Developer hereby assigns…’) rather than future-tense language, and require code to be delivered to a repository you own throughout development, not just at project completion.
If you’re an agency or solo developer on the other side of this, know that the same rules protect you: without a signed assignment, you may retain rights to code you built for a client, even after the relationship ends.
Explore more: more app development guides.
App code ownership after firing a developer FAQs
Does paying for the app mean I automatically own the code?
No. Payment alone doesn’t transfer copyright. For independent contractors, ownership only transfers with a signed written assignment; without one, you typically only have an implied license to use the software.
Is ‘work made for hire’ language enough in a contractor agreement?
Often not by itself. Custom software generally doesn’t fall into the nine statutory categories eligible for work-for-hire treatment by contract, so a written copyright assignment clause is the safer, more enforceable approach.
Can I lock a fired developer out of the code repository?
If your business owns and administers the repository (e.g., a company-owned GitHub organization), you can remove their access immediately as the admin — you don’t need their permission or cooperation to do that.
What if my contract doesn’t mention IP ownership at all?
For a contractor, silence generally favors the developer retaining copyright. Review any correspondence for language that could establish an assignment, and consider consulting an IP attorney before assuming you have full rights.
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Photo by Chris Ried on Unsplash.