It is often the case, particularly with images, that a rights holder will not assign full rights to a third party. Instead they will licence rights for particular purposes to a resource creator. A licence permits someone to copy or otherwise make use of material, whilst the rights owner retains and protects their rights to that material. Licences are thus a prime type of pro-forma for use in rights clearing for visual arts resources. Licences Licences should always be in writing, they represent a formal contract.
Licences assume that all parties involved are equal.
All licences should have a set of terms in the contract, to ensure that both sides are protected. Restrictions on use For example, that the distributor will endeavour to prevent illegal infringement, specifying categories of resource users, e.g. the public, or a student in the UK, Europe or the World. This is very important because of the UK 'Unfair Contracts Act', which allows groups to get out of contracts where some clauses are unfair. The USA, for example, does not have this Act, which means that it would be very difficult to withdraw from a contract even though the terms are unfair. This is a very important part of the licence it is essential that these should be obtained .