What is the license?

What is a license?

If you want to transfer the copyright you can do it in two ways while completing the form for freelance contract:

• using a copyright protocol
• using a license

A non-exclusive license means that your client is granted the right to dispose of your work for a specified period of time, in this case, 15 years. After this period, the customer loses this right.

At the same time, by granting the license you keep the opportunity to continue selling your work to other customers (e.g. photos, programs and applications, add-ons to graphics programs, etc.).

On the other hand, by using the copyright protocol, no time limit is specified and in practice, copyrights are transferred forever. What's more, it prohibits the author from resale or obtaining financial benefits from the work.

License granting and its scope is specified in the Useme regulations (available here, Article 7). Unlike in the case of transferring copyright by using the protocol, no additional documents are required.

What’s more, granting a license entitles you to a lower tax in the same way as transferring copyright with a protocol does. The change of tax only applies to Polish citizens and residents.  You can read more about how to transfer copyright here.