I'm not talking about canonicity, but about the copyrights themselves. Right now, copyrights can be entirely divorced from the creator of the work. But the motivation of a corporation to hire someone to create a work for them and that of a creator to get paid for their work are different enough that we shouldn't be treating corporations the same as people in this instance.

The example was intentional. It's why I also mentioned Wasteland. Obsidian and inXile are very close, and Obsidian did work under contract to inXile for Wasteland 2. Those studios are both filled with ex-Interplay/Black Isle people. They all got fired, and the rights went somewhere else.