In the US, copyright law hopes to kindle the fire of creativity. The law belives there are a lot of 'little' people out there that have ideas that could create capital. So the law protects us wanna be creative types from the powerful. Software ownership defaults to the author if the (prospective) author does not assign or aggree to release ownership.

Ex: You're on a company retreat paid for by the company. You have a camera. You take pictures of events at the retreat. Who owns the rights to your pictures? Well, if you're not a company photographer and have not signed an agreement giving ownership to the company, then you do. You own the copyright. If another party wants to publish your images, they have to pay you for the right to use the copy.

Ownership of software is the same as ownership of a photograph!

>Don't know how it's in your countries, but in Russia we have 2 terms in a case of developing software DIRECTLY TO THE COMPANY:
>"property" and "authorship".
>
>"Property" - belongs to company, which pay the money. Usually companies ask for good documentated source code :-)
>
>"Authorship"(none of the software can be changed without developer, refrences, etc...) - belongs to developer.
>Usually right to distribute software belongs to company.