Deel vs Remote for Design Studios: Who Owns the Work

In most countries, yes, for economic rights: work created by an employee within the scope of their job generally belongs to the employer by default, even without a specific assignment clause. But that default varies by country, and some jurisdictions require an explicit written assignment even for employees, so don't rely on an assumed default without checking the local employment agreement's actual language. This is one of the clearest reasons to read the full employment contract text a platform generates for a given country, not just the summary of benefits and pay, since the summary a platform shows during onboarding rarely surfaces country-specific IP carve-outs on its own.

Separate from economic ownership, many European countries recognize moral rights, the author's personal right to be credited and to object to distortions of their work, that survive even a full transfer of economic rights and often can't be waived by contract at all. Portugal is one of several countries where this matters in practice: a designer can transfer the right to use and modify their work while still retaining a right to be identified as the author, and in some cases a right to object to certain reuses. Studios that publish work under the firm's name rather than the individual designer's should confirm how this plays out for each hire's country before assuming a standard contributor credit resolves it.

It matters significantly. Employee work product typically transfers to the employer by operation of law or a standard employment clause; contractor work product generally does not transfer automatically at all, and requires an explicit, well-drafted assignment clause in the contractor agreement itself. A California-law contractor agreement drafted for a US-based freelancer is unlikely to hold up cleanly in a European court if the actual work was performed there, which is exactly the gap an employer of record is meant to close by making the hire a genuine local employee under a locally enforceable contract.

Beyond the basic assignment clause, look for language addressing derivative works, adaptation for different project contexts, and use of the design in the studio's own portfolio and marketing materials, since these are the situations where a gap in the contract actually surfaces later. Both Deel and Remote generate locally compliant employment agreements, but the level of customization available for IP and moral-rights language varies, so ask directly whether the platform's standard template can be amended to add studio-specific reuse and portfolio-rights language, or whether you're limited to a fixed template.

Ask for these terms in every country's employment agreement:

• Derivative works: state who may build on or modify an original design, and under what conditions.
• Adaptation: cover reuse of a design in a project context different from the one it was created for.
• Portfolio and marketing use: let the studio show the work in its own portfolio and promotional materials.
• Credit and attribution: address how the author is named, since moral rights can survive assignment and often can't be waived.
• Local review: have counsel confirm what is actually enforceable in each specific country.

A studio with designers employed across multiple countries ends up with a patchwork of IP outcomes unless it standardizes its approach deliberately: request the same reuse and moral-rights language be added to every country's employment agreement where the platform allows customization, and flag countries where it doesn't so you know where the gap sits. Keep a simple internal record of which countries' agreements include explicit portfolio and derivative-work rights and which don't, so a future project reuse decision doesn't depend on someone remembering which contract template was used two years earlier.

For a studio bringing on a single designer for a defined project phase, Deel's faster onboarding and broad country coverage usually outweigh the marginal benefit of deeper contract customization, provided the standard template already covers the reuse language you need. For a studio building a standing design team in one country, one that will produce years of portfolio-defining work, the ability to negotiate custom IP and moral-rights language into the employment agreement matters more than saving a few weeks on onboarding, which tends to favor Remote's entity-owned model and its typically greater willingness to customize contract terms for a longer-term relationship.