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I made a Runway video for a client. Who should register it?

2026-10-21 · OpenStela

Whoever the contract says ends up holding the rights should register it. If the client gets everything, through a work-made-for-hire clause or an assignment, the record belongs in the client's account. If you keep the copyright and the client gets a licence, it belongs in yours. Either way, register the exact file you deliver before you send it, and put the record's Proof Pack in the delivery folder.

The confusing part is that a registration has two "who" fields, and they answer different questions. The registrant is the account that made the record. The attribution is the name the work is published under. They don't have to match. This post goes through what the contract decides, how US and Taiwan law fill the gaps when it says nothing, and how to fill in each field so the record says what's actually true.

Start with the contract, then the tool's terms

Runway is the tool; the client relationship is the deal. Read both.

What you may do with Runway outputs, commercially or otherwise, is set by Runway's terms for your plan. Read the Terms of Use yourself (checked October 21, 2026; we don't summarise it because terms change). If your contract promises the client something the tool's terms don't allow you to give, the contract can't fix that.

Then read your contract with the client for three things:

1. Who owns the copyright in the finished video. Look for "work made for hire", "assignment", "all rights", "transfer" or the local equivalent.
2. What licence goes the other way. Many freelancers keep the right to show client work in a portfolio. That's a licence back to you, and it matters for what you can post.
3. Credit. Whether the video goes out under the client's brand, your name, both, or no name at all.

If the contract doesn't answer these, ask in writing before delivery and keep the reply. With no contract at all, the law decides, and the default may surprise one of you.

What the law does when the contract is silent

Two jurisdictions many of our readers work in. This is general information, not legal advice.

United States. The Copyright Office's Circular 30, Works Made for Hire (revised August 2024) says a work is made for hire in two situations: when it's "created by an employee as part of the employee's regular duties", or when a certain type of work is created under "an express written agreement" with the party who commissioned it. For commissioned work, all four conditions must hold: the work falls into one of nine categories, there is a written agreement, it expressly says the work is made for hire, and both sides signed it. "If a work fails to satisfy any of these requirements, it is not a work made for hire." One of the nine categories is "a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work". Whether your particular video fits is a question for your contract and, if it matters, a lawyer.

When a work is made for hire, the Circular says, "the party that hired the individual is considered both the author and the copyright owner." When it isn't, the default in 17 U.S.C. § 201(a) applies: copyright "vests initially in the author or authors of the work." It can still move to the client, but under § 204(a), a transfer "is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance... is in writing and signed by the owner." An invoice that says "final video" is usually not that.

Taiwan. The Copyright Act separates employees from commissioned creators. Under Article 11, an employee who makes a work on the job is its author unless the contract names the employer, but the economic rights go to the employer unless the contract says otherwise. Under Article 12, for a commissioned work the person commissioned is the author unless the contract names the client. Economic rights follow the contract, and if the contract says nothing they stay with the creator, while the client who paid may still use the work. Article 36 adds that where the scope of a transfer is unclear, the unclear part is presumed not transferred. (Law as amended May 4, 2022, checked October 21, 2026.)

So a freelancer with no signed contract usually still holds the copyright in both places, and in Taiwan the client may still use the video. A short signed clause changes the answer.

The AI part changes what there is to own

There's a second layer. Rights in a Runway video only cover the parts a person authored. The Copyright Office's Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability (January 2025) concludes (p. iii) that "copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material, or material where there is insufficient human control over the expressive elements", and that "prompts do not alone provide sufficient control". It also says human authors are entitled to copyright in "the creative selection, coordination, or arrangement of material in the outputs, or creative modifications of the outputs." Taiwan's IP Office said much the same in 電子郵件1141017b (October 17, 2025): where AI is used as a tool with actual human creative input, the result can be protected; content completed by the AI alone cannot.

For client work, this means the contract is mostly moving your edit, your script, your shots, your sound and your arrangement. The raw Runway clips may carry no copyright for anyone to transfer. That's why the contribution field matters even when the client ends up owning the record. How much do I have to do for an AI work to be protected? goes through these sources in more detail, and are my prompts copyrightable? covers the prompt question.

Registrant and attribution are two different fields

On OpenStela, a work's authorship record holds both names, and they mean different things:

The record is frozen once it's written, and it can't be moved to another account on its own. (The only exception: a work bound to a single character moves with that character when the character is sold through the deal room.) So pick the account and the names before you register, not after.

How that plays out:

1. The client owns everything. The client registers it from their own account. Attribution is whatever the contract says the credit is: their brand, or "Brand, produced by Your Studio". Rights: My own work. Your job is to send them the exact delivery file and a contribution note they can paste in, since you're the one who knows what was done by hand.
2. You keep the copyright, the client gets a licence. You register it from your account. Attribution is your name or studio. Rights: My own work. The client gets the Proof Pack with the delivery.
3. You've assigned the rights but kept a portfolio licence. Neither declaration says "I made this but the client owns it". Don't pick the closest one. Let the client register the delivery file, and if you want your own record for the portfolio cut, register that separate file under I hold a licence, if that's what your contract says.

The platform doesn't check the declaration or the names against your contract, and it doesn't judge whether you made the video. The record shows what the registrant said, about which file, on which date.

Register the delivery file, then hand over the Proof Pack

Do this before you send the final file, on the works page. Registering is free; uploaded works share 300 MB of space per account, and there's a daily limit on how many works one account can register (see pricing).

1. Upload the exact mp4 or webm you're delivering. Video files can be up to 95 MB. If the master is larger, register the delivery export and keep the master alongside it.
2. Title: the project name the client uses, plus the version, such as "Spring launch 30s, v3 final".
3. Attribution: as agreed in the contract.
4. Created on: the date you finished this cut, if you know it.
5. Tick This work was made with AI tools and list them under Which tools: Runway, plus your editor, sound and voice tools.
6. Your contribution: required for AI-assisted work. Write it in verbs. "Wrote the script, built 14 shots from my own reference frames in Runway, kept 9, cut and graded in Resolve, recorded the voice-over."
7. Choose the rights declaration that's true, as above.
8. Most client work is under embargo until launch, so untick Show on my public page. A private record is still fingerprinted and anchored, and the public verify page shows only that it exists, when it was registered and whether it's on chain. No title, no names.

The fingerprint is the SHA-256 of the file. That night's batch is anchored to Arbitrum One at 19:20 UTC. After it runs, open the work's menu, download the Proof Pack and add it to the delivery. It contains a PDF of the record, record.json with the Merkle proof, the record card image and a README that explains how to recompute everything without us.

The client can compute the SHA-256 of the file they received (shasum -a 256 on a Mac, certutil -hashfile on Windows), paste it into the verify page and see that it matches. No account needed. If their team re-encodes the video for social, the new file won't match. That's expected: the record is about the file you handed over. How do I put a date on an AI video? explains why file records beat link records.

What the record doesn't do: it doesn't prove you're the author, doesn't decide who owns the video, and isn't a copyright registration. It's a dated, verifiable record of what was delivered, under what name, with what stated contribution. That's useful if a dispute comes up over versions, deadlines or who made what. What a character ID proves, and what it doesn't explains where that line sits.