HOW DO WE LICENSE OUR IMAGES?

Imagine for a moment that you decide to purchase a CD or download of your favorite artist. Providing you use the music for its intended purpose, I.e., personal entertainment then you are not expected or required to make any further license payments. However, should you wish to use that music for a public performance then you will need a public performance license, which is an agreement between yourself as the music user and the artist, who owns the copyright to the music. So hold that thought.

Following a photoshoot, there are two methods of transferring ownership of the images to a client, so we’ll start our discussion of licensing by looking at these two methods.

Do we license or assign images?

In my previous blog post, “How does copyright law apply to our photoshoots?”, which you can access here, I mentioned Work-For-Hire working arrangements. Under this form of work relationship, a photographer assigns, or “gives away” all the rights to the photograph to a third party. In so doing, the photographer is effectively no longer the copyright owner of the photograph. But I’m not going to go too far into this because as pointed out in that previous post, we do not, and never will, enter into a work-for-hire relationship.

In our photographer-client relationships, we license our images, so we grant our clients permission to use the images that we create for them for personal, commercial, noncommercial, or other types of uses. This is preferable to assigning all our rights away to a client or any other third party.

Now when we license images, we may do so either exclusively or non-exclusively, so next we’ll take a look at that.

Are the rights in our work being transferred exclusively or non-exclusively?

On page 2 of our contracts we include a section titled “Client Usage; Limited Commercial Use License.” In the first sentence of that section it states: “Client is purchasing from Photographer high-resolution un-watermarked digital files and Photographer is issuing to Client _________________ perpetual limited license for Client’s limited commercial use of the digital files in the normal course of Client’s business, including, but not limited to, advertising, marketing, or other promotions, or on Client’s website, blog, or social media platforms.” Boy, is that a long sentence, don’t you just love legal speak!

Where we have included the underline we will enter either “Exclusive or Non-exclusive”, depending on the project. So what do these two options mean?

An exclusive provision means that the client for whom we produce the images is the only party who has the licensed rights and as such has an exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, or publicly display the images. In providing an exclusive license, we are transferring the entirety of our rights, including our copyright. Do you know how much chance a client has of me granting an exclusive license? Extremely little, unless a great deal of money is involved in transferring our copyright!

A non-exclusive provision on the other hand means that we, as the copyright owners license exactly the same rights to our client that we would with an exclusive provision, except that we retain the copyright to the images. In virtually all contracts you will find that entry in the Client Usage; Limited Commercial Use License section will read “non-exclusive”.

The term “perpetual limited license” authorizes our clients to use the images as stated indefinitely. 

What happens if a client wishes to transfer the images to a third party?

In our proposals we include the text “Any usage of the images by a third party, including but not limited to, magazines, newspapers, marketing companies etc., is strictly prohibited unless approved in writing by us. The photographs may not be sold or reproduced without the express written permission of Aspire Media LLC”. Further, our contracts state “This Agreement may not be assigned by either party without the prior written permission of the other side”. So I guess a client cannot transfer the images then.

Remember during the introduction I asked you to hold that thought? You purchased a CD, and the artist licensed you with certain rights, just as we license rights to our clients. But now you may wish to take it a step further and use that artist’s music for public performance. Under your initial agreement you were prohibited from doing so, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the artist will prevent you from doing so, it’s just a case of requesting permission.

The same applies to our images. Let’s assume a national magazine wishes to also use those images and reaches out to our client asking to do so. Our client should extend that request to us, and in turn, we will offer the magazine a license, which they may choose to purchase if they wish. This does not place any financial burden on our client as the license would be paid by a third party.

What arrangements do we make with clients who wish to advertise nationally, such as in magazines or on TV, or even internationally?

The licensing discussion thus far has assumed that our client is a local company, and so national advertising does not enter the equation, so the client receives a perpetual limited license. But license costs are essentially based on how many eyes will view the images. For smaller, local companies using our images for website, social media, local advertising, brochures etc, charged licensing is not considered; a client pays for the photoshoot and receives a perpetual limited license. Where images are to be used for nationwide and/or international advertising and/or editorial purposes, then we do not offer a perpetual license. Instead we will include a licensing fee within our project proposal. There are photographers who will charge even the smallest of clients licensing fees. We choose not to do that, but we do retain the right to do that for larger companies that operate nationally and/or internationally.

In Summary

I hope this post answers any questions that you may have regarding licensing when working with us. As already mentioned above, there is a lot of common ground when discussing copyright and licensing, so I covered the former in my previous post “How does copyright law apply to our photoshoots?”. Also as mentioned, I am not a lawyer, this is only my take on the world of licensing as it relates to our business with our clients, so take away what you may from this post.

 True Images Photography provides professional beverage, food and product commercial photography that gets your business noticed. Feel free to book a free 30-minute consultation at https://calendly.com/trueimagesphoto/free-consultation.

 Do look around the rest of the blog here for more helpful posts, and if you have any questions please reach out. I’m happy to advise. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn where I always answer messages with a detailed reply.