Licensing Review

Licence dimensions that matter

A licence can be limited by duration, territory, media, audience, placement, resolution, number of impressions, exclusivity, language, campaign, customer or right to sublicense. A valid licence for one use does not necessarily authorize another.

Conversely, the absence of a licence in the requester’s own files does not prove that no licence exists elsewhere in a distribution chain.

• Licensor and licensee identity
• Dates and renewal terms
• Territory and media
• Commercial or editorial scope
• Sublicensing and assignment
• Attribution and metadata obligations

Stock and agency records

Stock platforms may license content under standardized terms and may not disclose the customer to a contributor without a defined process. Contributor dashboards, upload dates, royalty records and platform communications can help identify the chain.

Atlantic should distinguish between contributor ownership, platform distribution rights and the end user’s licence.

Exceptions and unresolved uses

Even where no licence is found, the use may require assessment of statutory exceptions, fair use, public-domain status, government-work rules, contractual consent or other jurisdiction-specific issues.

If the record remains incomplete, the appropriate classification is unresolved—not confirmed infringement.

Outcome records

The review should state which repositories and records were checked, what was found, what was not available and what assumptions remain. Supporting documents should be linked rather than summarized inaccurately.

Any retroactive licence or settlement proposal must be separately authorized and should not be presented as an existing legal obligation unless counsel confirms the basis.