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Irish Copyright Licensing Agency

Licences

With the right licence in place, copyright compliance becomes a simple and straightforward process. Creators know that their work is protected, and licensees understand exactly how they can use that work.

But how do you know if you need a licence? It’s simple: if you want to share, copy and distribute published work, you must ask for permission, and only proceed when you receive a ‘yes’.

An ICLA licence makes this fuss-free – even when you need to use work from multiple creators.

Our licences

Ireland’s copyright legislation, informed by related EU Directives, endeavours to balance the rights of creators and publishers with the needs of teaching and education. This balance is achieved through specific exceptions to copyright and ICLA’s educational licences enable those that relate to copying, and making available published content to staff and students for educational purposes.

We offer licences for:

The legislation also allows exceptions to copyright for private (non-commercial) research and study, news reporting, review/criticism, parody/caricature, and non-commercial data mining. For any other uses of published content, you must obtain permission directly from the owner or – if you wish to copy extracts for use within your organisation – you can do so from multiple publications on an unlimited number of occasions under an ICLA licence for:

About collective licences

Where an organisation wants to use multiple works of many different creators, asking for permission individually can become a barrier to education or business. This is where collective licensing can provide the answer.

ICLA provides collective licences on behalf of writers, visual creators (still images) and their publishers that enable schools, further education colleges, universities, language schools, businesses, law firms, pharmaceutical companies, and government departments to copy what they need for day-to-day purposes. This is done without jeopardising the ability of individual copyright owners to control and commercialise their work – if they so wish.

With an ICLA licence, everyone in your organisation will have an indemnity to copy all the works ICLA represents through its many mandating channels within tried-and-tested rules. In return, you will be occasionally asked for a record of works used/copied, and a licence fee that will be distributed to copyright owners on the basis of those records.

ICLA issues licences to Licencees who supply them with data and fees

These are some of the cases where your organisation can either make use of an ICLA collective licence or alternatively seek individual permission:

  • I want to copy an article from a digital or print magazine to share with colleagues.
  • I want to copy a chapter from a book to distribute to my students.
  • I want to use some illustrations available on the internet in my business presentation or lecture PowerPoint.
  • I want to use text and still images on the internet in my lecture notes or company reports.
  • I want to share a clipping from a Media Monitoring Agency with colleagues.
  • I want to copy an article obtained from a document library for my students or colleagues.
  • I want to store a copy of a chapter or article on our intranet.
  • I want to make a copy of a chapter or article stored on our intranet available to others in my organisation.

These are some of the cases where collective licensing cannot help and you must contact the individual rightsholder(s):

  • I want to download an article from an original digital publication that is behind a paywall.
  • I want to include copyright work in my organisation’s website.
  • I want to distribute a research paper to possible future clients as a support for gaining new business.
  • I want to copy the whole of a publication and distribute it to students/clients.
  • I want to include significant sections of a copyright work in a new publication.
  • I want to create a systematic document library for access by others in my organisation.

Want to learn more about copyright and how it helps creators to keep creating? Read our Understanding Copyright guide.