Reviewed as of 1 October 2026. If you spot an error, write to me.
You have paid a stock image library for a photograph. It shows a painting, a sculpture, a distinctive building or a person. Can you use it for your poster, your book or your website? It depends on what you have been licensed, and on what the library was able to license.
An image has several layers
A single photograph can contain rights belonging to different people:
- The photograph. It belongs to its author. If it is an original photographic work, it is protected for the photographer’s whole life plus seventy years. If it is a mere photograph, with no originality, for twenty-five years from when it was taken.
- The work shown. A painting, a sculpture or an illustration has its own rights, which belong to its author or their heirs until it enters the public domain.
- The people portrayed. They have a right to their own image.
- Trade marks and objects. A logo or a protected design may have its own rules.
- The licence. It sets out for which uses, in which media, for how long and in which territory you may use all of the above.
Spain’s intellectual property law states that authors’ rights are independent of, and compatible with, other rights over the same thing. That is why whoever licenses one layer to you does not necessarily license the others.
What to check in the licence
- Whether it covers the work depicted. Some libraries also obtain the rights to the photographed work and say so. Others license only the photograph.
- Whether the use is editorial or commercial. Many images may only be used in an informational context, not in advertising or on products.
- Whether there are releases from the people and the property owners. These are usually shown as model or property releases.
- Limits on print run, medium, term and territory.
- What the supplier guarantees. A warranty or a contractual indemnity shares out the risk, but it does not make an unlawful use lawful.
‘Royalty-free’ means you pay once rather than for each use, not that the image is free of rights.
If the work is in the public domain
If the painting shown is already in the public domain, because seventy or eighty years have passed since its author’s death, depending on the case, the layer of the work disappears, but not that of the photograph or the licence. The guide on images of public domain works explains what a library or a museum may still charge for.
If the work is protected and the licence does not cover it
You need to ask the author of the work, their heirs or the organisation that manages their rights for permission. The guide on how to read an image licence explains how to record the permission and the credit afterwards.
Common mistakes
- Checking only the licence of the file and not what can be seen in it.
- Using an image licensed for editorial use in advertising.
- Copying from another website an image that someone bought: their licence does not extend to you. In 2018 the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that publishing on a website a photograph accessible on another requires fresh authorisation.
- Thinking that having paid is enough.
Further reading
On the open conversation
This guide is for guidance only and does not analyse the terms of any particular library. If you work in publishing, advertising or rights management and can share your experience, this notebook remains open.
Sources
- Real Decreto Legislativo 1/1996, de 12 de abril, texto refundido de la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual, arts. 3, 10, 26 and 128, and fourth transitional provision.
- Court of Justice of the European Union, judgment of 7 August 2018, Renckhoff, C-161/17.