Usage Rights

Usage rights and copyright are separate. The photographer or agency usually keeps the copyright, and the company buys a licence to use the image under set conditions.

What a licence specifies

Term	What it defines	Example
Media and channels	Where the asset may appear	Web and social, no print or broadcast
Territory	Countries or regions	European Union only
Duration	Start and end of the licence	18 months from the campaign launch
Exclusivity	Whether others may license the same image	Exclusive in the beverage category
Quantity	Print runs, impressions, number of placements	Up to 50,000 printed copies
Modifications	Whether the image may be cropped, retouched or combined with others	Cropping allowed, no compositing
Credit	Whether and how the creator must be named	The photographer's name next to the image
Prohibitions	Uses that are never allowed	No resale, no use to train AI models

Licence types

• Rights-managed: licensed for a specific use, with channels, territory and duration priced into the fee. Any use beyond those terms needs a new licence.
• Royalty-free: one fee for broad, open-ended use, usually with restrictions such as no resale, no use in a logo and limits on sensitive subjects.
• Commissioned work: terms negotiated in the contract with the photographer or agency, from a single campaign to a full buyout.
• Open licences such as Creative Commons: free to use under conditions like attribution or non-commercial use.
• Owned content: produced by employees, so the company holds the copyright. Releases for the people and places shown are still needed.

Releases and consent

A licence covers the photograph. The people and places in it need their own permission:

• Model release: consent from a recognisable person to the commercial use of their likeness. Employees in team photos need one too.
• Property release: permission for private buildings, interiors, artworks, or recognisable products of other brands.
• Location permit: for shoots on private or regulated sites.

The IPTC Photo Metadata Standard has fields for the copyright notice, credit line, rights usage terms, and model and property release status, so these details can travel inside the file.

Tracking usage rights

Most rights problems happen when the terms exist but the person downloading the file cannot see them. A photo licensed for one campaign is reused two years later in a sales deck, or a partner keeps an image on its website after the licence has ended. To prevent this:

1. Record the rights as structured fields on the asset, in addition to the PDF contract.
2. Attach the licence and the releases to the asset itself.
3. Show the terms at the moment of download, and block uses the licence does not allow.
4. Set an expiry date and review the assets that expire soon.
5. Take expired assets out of shares and portals on the expiry date.

The guide on image rights in shared drives shows where file storage without rights fields leaves gaps.

Usage rights in Freedam

• Rights policies record the allowed actions, territories, channels (web, print, social, paid social, broadcast, press, email, point of sale and others), prohibitions, duties such as attribution or a watermark, and an expiry date. They are stored in ODRL, the W3C format described under digital rights management.
• Templates cover common licences, such as a one-year EU campaign, 18 months of social use in the EU, or a perpetual global licence. A policy can be applied to many selected assets in one bulk action.
• Model releases, property releases, licensing agreements and contracts can be attached to each asset as files.
• Downloads, new share links and publication channels are checked against the policy, as described on the rights and compliance page. A blocked download or share names the assets that were blocked, and a watermark duty makes downloads watermarked.
• A policy can require people to accept its terms before downloading. Acceptance is recorded per version of the terms.
• Existing share links check the policy each time they are opened, so an asset whose licence has expired is no longer served through them.
• The rights policies page lists policies that expire soon. A nightly job moves assets with expired rights to a workflow status set per asset class.
• Blocked actions, acknowledgements and downloads under a policy are logged, and the log can be filtered and exported. See audit trail.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between copyright and usage rights?

Copyright is the creator's legal ownership of the work. Usage rights are the permissions the copyright holder grants to someone else, under a licence, to use the work in defined ways.

What happens if an image is used after its licence expires?

The use is unlicensed. The rights holder can ask for the image to be removed and claim a fee, which is often higher than the original licence. Removing expired images from shares, portals and websites on time avoids most of these claims.

Do you need a model release for photos of employees?

For marketing use of a recognisable person, a signed release is standard practice, employees included. In the EU, a photo of an identifiable person is also personal data under the GDPR, so the release should say what the photo will be used for and for how long.