In other words, DRM from top to bottom ...

I think as a employee usually you do a NDA or something like that were you
agree that all work done at work is your employer's copyright. I don't
think that is entirely necessary from a legal standpoint, but it helps make
sure people understand what is going on.

If your a contractor then that is much more out in the open. I suppose most
of the time contractors will provide copyright transfers as part of their
service, but that is really up to the contractor and the employer to
negotiate and can go either way.

Now there are some dirty tricks that are common among Universities and
whatnot. A lot of those people feel that by providing a educational
environment they are providing a community service so that things like
doing software patents is just natural for them to do to raise capital. A
sense of entitlement.

So what happens at a lot of those places is that Universities will take
student software and inventions and get software patents and take control
of the copyrights. A few times students have tried to fight them, but if
they are doing it as part of classwork and are doing it using facilities
provided by the university then I think they generally lose.

So if your a employee or, especially a student, and you want to do
something on your own you can later profit from or whatever then make sure
to do it on your own time with your own equipment or you may lose control
of it.