What is Right of use?
A right of use is contractually granted permission to use a copyright-protected work. The author remains the author but can cut the right to size by type, territory, duration and purpose. German law sets this out in section 31 UrhG; Austria draws the same two levels as Werknutzungsbewilligung and Werknutzungsrecht in section 24 UrhG. The distinction between simple and exclusive matters: a simple right can be granted again and again by the same author, an exclusive one only once.
What you actually owe therefore sits in the scope, not in the price. A licence may be limited to one country, to two years, to your own website without social media, to editorial use without advertising, or it may rule out use in a logo altogether. Many portals additionally require the photographer to be credited. If one of those conditions falls away, it is not just the condition that falls away but the permission itself, and the use becomes an infringement retrospectively.
For companies the harder part is usually not the licence but the evidence. Anyone who has to show three years later where a product photograph came from needs the invoice, the licence text and the download date, not just the file on the server. The same applies to commissioned photography: an invoice for a shoot is not a licence. Without a written agreement, in case of doubt only the purpose the pictures were made for is covered.
Why does Right of use matter?
The bill for a missing right of use arrives later and higher than the licence would have been. Courts calculate by licence analogy, and if the photographer's credit is missing as well the amount typically doubles: the German Federal Court of Justice awarded 100 euros in licence damages plus a further 100 euros for a plain snapshot. In Austria the doubling sits in the statute itself as twice the appropriate fee.
Right of use in practice
- 01A firm buys a stock image for its home page and later uses it on an exhibition wall, although the licence covers digital use only.
- 02An agency has the photography contract expressly cover onward transfer to portals and partner sites, because the client needs the images there too.
- 03A company keeps an image register with file, source, licence number, term and credit requirement, so the evidence does not hang on a lost email.
