Who Owns the Software, and For How Long

In one line

The person who wrote the code owns it, unless they wrote it as an employee, in which case the employer does, and a contractor is not an employee.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: section 17 of the Copyright Act, 1957 makes the author of a work the first owner of the copyright, subject to provisos of which clause (c) provides that in the case of a work made in the course of the author's employment under a contract of service or apprenticeship the employer shall, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, be the first owner; section 22 fixes the term of copyright in a literary work at the author's lifetime plus sixty years from the beginning of the calendar year following his death; and sections 18 and 19 govern assignment, requiring it to be in writing signed by the assignor and to specify the work, the rights, the duration and the territorial extent.

Why ownership is the first question

Because a company that commissioned software and did not take an assignment may not own it, and that discovery is usually made when the company tries to sell the business or sue a competitor.

And because the rule is counter-intuitive. Paying for something does not make you its owner in copyright. Section 17 starts from the author, and money is not one of the exceptions.

Section 17: the author is the first owner

"Subject to the provisions of this Act, the author of a work shall be the first owner of the copyright therein."

Who is the author of a computer programme? Section 2(d)(vi) provides that in relation to any literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work which is computer-generated, the author is the person who causes the work to be created. For a programme written by a human being, section 2(d)(i) applies and the author is the author of the work, meaning the programmer.

Section 2(d)(vi) is worth pausing on, because it is India's answer to the question every jurisdiction is now asking about work produced by a machine. It was inserted long before generative systems existed and it says that where a work is computer-generated, the author is the person who caused it to be created. Chapter 990 works the current problem, and this clause is the starting point for it.

The provisos, and the one that matters

Proviso (a): the journalist's rule. A literary, dramatic or artistic work made by the author in the course of employment by the proprietor of a newspaper, magazine or similar periodical under a contract of service or apprenticeship, for the purpose of publication there, belongs to the proprietor so far as the copyright relates to publication in a periodical or to reproduction for that purpose, and in all other respects the author is the first owner. This is a split ownership rule and it does not apply to software.