The courseware will be jointly owned by each contributor of copyrightable expression who, at the time their work is created, expects his or her contribution to be merged into a unified whole. This means that the faculty member, the graduate student programmer and the brother-in-law will be joint owners of the courseware materials.

This is set out in the copyright law in Section 201(a) initial ownership, and Section 101's definition of a joint work. Numerous court cases further refine the practical meaning of these sections.