Rights of use for works

By granting rights of use under a licence agreement, authors can allow third parties to use their works. Licence agreements set the parameters for use. If employees develop software during their working hours, the employer automatically receives the exclusive rights of use to exercise all property rights. However, this only applies as long as nothing else is agreed in the employment contract.

For many authors, transferred rights of use are important for securing their existence. The financial compensation for the right of use often represents a significant source of income.
As a rule, the author can determine the scope of the rights of use himself.

In the case of simple rights of use, authors or other third parties who have also acquired rights to a work can also use it. Simple rights of use are applied to image databases, for example. Photos can be used there by many different people. A simple right of use is usually paid significantly less than an exclusive right.

The exclusive right of use allows purchasers to use a work to the exclusion of other persons. The scope of the rights of use is defined in the licence agreement.

Exclusive rights of use give the owner the power to make decisions on granting further rights of use. He can take action against copyright infringements - also from the author's side.

If authors assign their exclusive rights of use and wish to
If authors wish to assign their exclusive rights of use and reserve the use for themselves, they can do so with the help of so-called limited exclusivity. The author can only use his or her own work if this is stated in the contract.

The rights of use can be limited in various ways by a contract. Restrictions can be of a temporal, content-related or spatial nature. With regard to the spatial restriction, the right of use applies exclusively to certain locations, language areas or countries. However, worldwide rights of use can also be acquired. A time limitation is when a work may only be used for a predefined period of time or until a specific point in time. The time limitation is applied to film or stage works and specifies performance dates. Content restriction refers to the separate granting of individual types of use for works.

As a rule, a right of use becomes unnecessary 70 years after the death of the author. From this point on, the work is in the public domain and can be used by third parties even without rights of use.