C3 Patent and Intellectual Property Law

May112009 | Steve O'Donnell

Creative Commons licensing

The Creative Commons licenses allow people to share their intellectual property with others while retaining certain rights to the work. It sounds good, but it can be it's own source of problems.

For the sake of argument, lets say that “Artist” downloads a number of Creative Commons (“CC”) licensed photographs and makes a collage of them. Under the Attribution clause of the licenses, Artist would need to indicate the names of the original creators. That doesn't sound too onerous, if Artist is only using a few CC works, but at some point, the inclusion of names detracts from the Artist's own work in compiling and organizing the separate works. Additionally, Artist would have to ensure that the CC license allows him to do what he wants to do. Some flavors of the license would allow Artist to make derivative works, others don't. Similarly, some flavors would allow Artist to sell prints of his collage, others don't.

If someone doesn't comply with the CC license then the license terminates and they could be subjected to a copyright infringement suit. If the original author thought this through, the copyright on the piece would be registered within three months of first making it public. In that way, if the license is violated there are statutory damages as high as $150k + costs and legal fees that are available to the original author. 17 U.S.C. § 412, 17 U.S.C. § 504.

In short, nothing is ever easy. Just because a work subject to a Creative Commons license, don't think that you can use it for whatever you want. Read the license, and if you have any questions contact an intellectual property attorney.