When you do work for a company, you probably have signed a contract that says you can''t use things you make for them for about 5 years orso.

There was another thread on this subject a week ago orso...

I''ve read a lot about music copyright law, and in many instances it''s the same for any kind of creative work. If you are an employee of a company and you create artwork for a product that they own, then generally your work will be considered a work for hire and you have no rights to it whatsoever. They don''t really even have to credit you if they don''t want to, but I assume they almost certainly will. When you''re doing freelance work it can pretty much be set up howver you like. You can do work for hire where they own the copyright over the final work, or you can retain the rights and license the use of the material on an exclusive or non-exclusive basis, charging different prices for each of those instances. I don''t have enough experience with contracted art work to even guess how much you should charge in any situation.

For tons of info on the subject, try the U.S. Copyright Office: http://www.copyright.gov . There is an "International Copyright" section on there that looks pretty informative, and some more U.S.-centric information elsewhere on the site.