Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730 (1989), is a US copyright law and labor law case of a United States Supreme Court case regarding ownership of copyright. Facts The Community for Creative Non-Violence, a homeless charity, paid sculptor James Earl Reid for a statue that depicted the plight of homeless people for a Christmas pageant in Washington DC, called "Third World America". CCNV members visited Reid's Baltimore studio as he made the statue, gave suggestions and directions about its appearance. CCNV paid Reid the final installment on delivery. They had not discussed copyright in the sculpture. They both filed competing copyright registration certificates. The District Court held that CCNV had the copyright, as it was a ‘work made for hire’ under the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 101, owned exclusively by CCNV under § 201(b). This vests copyright ownership of works for hire in the employer or other person for whom the work is prepared, unless there is a written agreement to the contrary. Judgment Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit The Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, held the sculpture was not a ‘work made for hire’ because Reid was not an employee, but an independent contractor. However it remanded to the lower court to determine if the statue's copyright was co-owned under §201(a) Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall giving the court's opinion, the Supreme Court held Reid was an independent contractor, not an employee, so the work was not "made for hire" under §101, and the copyright belonged to Reid, at least in part. The Court determined that Reid's commission was not "specially ordered or commissioned" under paragraph 2 of 17 USC 101's "work made for hire" definition. It then considered whether Reid was an "employee" preparing the sculpture "within the scope of his employment", whose work fell within "work made for hire", or an independent contract whose work did not fall within "work made for hire". The Court held that common law agency principles should be applied to decide whether a work is made by an employee or an independent contractor. While the statute was silent on the meaning of "employee," Congress could be inferred to have wanted to incorporate agency law definitions, as it also referred to the term "scope of employment" that agency law uses. The general common law of agency must be used over the