What a license is actually letting you do

A designer licenses an illustration for a client's website. The client loves it and asks to print it on packaging. The designer remembers paying for the download but not whether merchandise was included. That is the usual problem: you remember the price, not the scope.

A license is permission for the uses it names. An assignment transfers ownership. The Copyright Act treats an assignment and an exclusive license as transfers of ownership, and a nonexclusive license as neither 5. Each right in a copyright can be transferred and owned separately, so one party can control print while another controls the website 1. So the question is never "do I have a license?" It is "does my license cover what I now want to do?"

Read the grant against your plan

Work through the license in this order:

1. The work. Is the license for this exact file, edition and version?
2. The licensee. Is it the freelancer, the client, or both? Does it extend to the client's printer, franchisees or customers?
3. The uses. A copyright owner controls copying, adapting, distributing, publicly performing and publicly displaying the work 4. Find each one your plan needs in the grant: putting the illustration on packaging copies it and distributes copies; cropping it into a pattern adapts it.

Ignore the label until you have read the grant. "Royalty-free" tells you how you pay, not what you may do. A royalty-free license can still exclude merchandise, cap print runs or the number of users, or forbid passing the file on. Read the terms with your concrete plan beside them.

Check the limits: time, territory, media, exclusivity

The law lets a grant of rights be limited in time or place 5, and license terms often limit the medium or the number of copies too. One campaign is not an ongoing series. A website is not a downloadable asset your customers may reuse. Write down the end date, the territory, the media and whether you are the only licensee.

For the illustration, ask: may the client send the file to a packaging printer, and for what purpose? If the license lets a service provider produce the authorized product, that does not let the printer reuse the illustration for its other customers. Trace every hand the file passes through.

Meet the conditions, or lose the license

Many licenses grant permission only on conditions. Creative Commons BY 4.0 is a clear example. When you share the material, you must keep the creator's name, the copyright notice, a notice referring to the license and its warranty disclaimer, and a link to the material where practicable, and you must say whether you modified it 2. If you break a condition, your rights end automatically; they come back if you fix the problem within 30 days 2. The license also does not cover patent, trademark, publicity or privacy rights, so a CC-licensed photo of a person or a logo still needs separate clearance for those 2.

An open-source license is still a license with conditions. Under the Open Source Definition, a license can, for example, require that modified versions carry a different name or version number 3.

Confirm the licensor can license it

Only the current copyright owner of the exact material, or an agent acting for them, can grant permission 4. A website that shows someone else's photograph does not thereby have the right to license it, and a contract cannot grant rights the licensor never had. Before you rely on a license:

• Check the credits and acknowledgments; they flag material that may belong to someone other than the owner named in the copyright notice 4.
• Check the file's metadata for the creator, owner or license terms 4.
• Search the Copyright Office's online records, which cover registrations and transfers from 1978 on 4.

When the project changes, get a new permission in writing

If the client moves from website to packaging, reread the license before you print. You will find one of three answers: the use is covered, the owner offers a wider license, or a different illustration is the better choice.

If you need more, ask the owner (see how to ask for permission) and name the exact material, how you will use it, the audience, and whether it will be sold 4. Get the answer in writing. An exclusive license, like an assignment, is valid only in a writing signed by the owner 1 5. A nonexclusive license is not a transfer 5, but a written one gives you and the owner the same record of what was agreed.

Keep the license with the file, together with a short note of what you planned to do under it. The next time the project grows, you check the note instead of guessing.