The employer has a right to the work products of its employees. While the employer will automatically become the owner of all physical objects produced, the rights to intellectual property such as inventions or copyrighted works will initially be owned by employees. The employer then needs a specific legal basis in each case to transfer the rights accrued by the employees to itself: a basis for this may be provisions of the Employee Invention Act, the Copyright Act or stipulations in labor contracts.
Dr. Henrik Holzapfel gives an overview of this in the chapter “Recht am Arbeitsergebnis” (right to the work product) of the “Tschöpe” handbook on labor law.
