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Usage rights define how your brand is allowed to use content created by someone else, including where it can appear and for how long. When you want to repost a customer’s photo, run an influencer-made video as a paid ad, or promote an industry award win, you can’t assume you have the right to do so. Rather, you need explicit permission to use the content. The creator sets the terms; usage rights capture them in writing.
While securing rights takes some work, it’s worth it to unlock usage of user-generated content. Emplifi’s Q3 2025 Social Media Benchmarks report found that social posts featuring user-generated content (UGC) drove more than 10 times higher conversion rates than non-UGC posts. Without proper usage rights, you might be forced to pull down a campaign prematurely, pay an unplanned fee, or even face legal action.
Here’s what usage rights are, how they differ from copyright and traditional licensing, and how to manage them via usage rights agreements and Shopify tools.
What are usage rights?
Usage rights determine how, where, and for how long someone other than the original creator can use a piece of content commercially—a photo, video, song, design, or other digital assets. These terms are usually written into a formal licensing agreement that spells out the permissions granted and the scope of how content can be used. Using content without a rights holder’s written permission can lead to legal disputes, so it’s always worth consulting legal experts for high-stakes campaigns.
Usage rights sit alongside broader questions of intellectual property rights, the legal category covering who owns a creative work and what others can do with it. Without proper usage rights in place, you risk claims of copyright infringement.
Brands most often need to secure usage rights in a few common scenarios:
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Influencer marketing. Reposting or repurposing a creator’s content, like turning a sponsored Instagram Reel into a paid ad on Google Ads or another ad management platform.
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User-generated content (UGC).UGC is digital content created by customers rather than your in-house team or creative agency—for example, publishing a customer’s product video on your website or resharing their social media posts.
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Original photography. When you commission work from a photographer, agency, or media outlet—like product or lifestyle images your contract with the rights holder will include usage rights. If you want to use those images beyond their original scope, you’ll need to negotiate and/or purchase additional rights.
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Press mentions and awards. Earning a favorable review or industry award doesn’t necessarily give you the right to promote it. Alex Penfold, the co-founder of men’s skincare brand Jaxon Lane, notes that when the brand won a grooming award, they still had to pay for the right to advertise it. “You have to pay the publishing company to actually license out the ability to tell anyone about the fact that you won.” This isn’t unique to the skincare industry—well-known research firms like J.D. Power (best known for their brand satisfaction rankings and awards) also require winners to separately license the right to use the award in marketing.
Usage rights vs. copyright vs. licensing
Usage rights, copyright, licensing are related but distinct:
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Copyright. The legal ownership right a creator automatically holds over creative work they’ve produced.
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A license. The legal permission copyright holders grant someone else to use that work.
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Usage rights. The specific terms of that permission—what’s allowed and for how long.
In short, the creator is the copyright owner, the license is the agreement that gives someone permission to use the copyrighted work, and usage rights are the practical details of that agreement and those permissions.
Types of usage rights licenses
License agreements may give rise to one of a few common broad categories of usage rights. No matter what type of usage rights you want to secure, have a qualified attorney review any license agreement your business uses.
Here are the most common types of licenses:
Royalty-free
Royalty-free usage rights are when a licensor pays a one-time, standardized fee for generally unlimited usage of the content for a period. Repeated payments for use are known as royalties. These usage rights don’t include any locked-in repeated payments—hence the name of this license type: royalty-free.
Royalty-free agreements can be the most expensive type of usage-rights licenses available, because the creator foregoes locked-in renewal fees or royalties. Sometimes it can also require the creator to give up all control, forever, over how the content is used, if the scope is unlimited.
That said, scope isn’t always unlimited or perpetual. Some royalty-free licenses come with real restrictions—a cap on how many copies you can print, a ban on using the image in a commercial logo or trademark, or non-exclusivity (meaning the same content could be licensed to another business). Always check the specific terms of your agreement rather than assuming “royalty-free” automatically means unlimited scope.
Rights-managed
Rights-managed usage specifies parameters of the permitted use—the term or duration, the territory where the content can be distributed, and the medium (social media only, broadcast media, a podcast, and so on). A rights-managed fee is calculated based on the specific rights the buyer wants to cover their intended use. Two brands licensing the same content for different scopes may pay very different prices. Payment can be structured as a flat fee covering the defined scope or ongoing royalties tied to renewals, extensions, or performance metrics.
Rights-managed licenses can also be non-exclusive or exclusive. Exclusivity rights almost always increase the license fee substantially.
Creative Commons
A Creative Commons license lets a copyright holder grant free use of their work under specific conditions, like requiring proper attribution or prohibiting use for commercial purposes.
Creative Commons licenses come in a few varieties. A CC BY license, for example, requires only attribution (credit to the creator)—you’re otherwise free to use the work commercially. A CC BY-NC license adds a non-commercial use restriction, meaning you can use the content editorially but not in paid advertising or product promotion.
Some Creative Commons licenses come with strict or more unusual conditions—like requiring anything you create using the work be shared under the same Creative Commons license terms (CC BY SA 4.0). Because permissions vary license to license, always check the specific terms attached to the content. These are usually noted where the content is published, like in a photo’s caption or a music library’s listing. Wikimedia Commons is probably the most exhaustive online resource for finding Creative Commons content, and it includes helpful breakdowns of exactly what you’re permitted to do.
Work for hire
In the United States, when you pay a photographer, artist, agency, or other creator to make content specifically for your brand, it’s a work made-for-hire. This is not technically a license, but an agreement in which one party agrees to create something for the other in exchange for a fee. In these scenarios, the business becomes the copyright holder of the content.
State-level regulations can also create headaches specifically around work-for-hire contracts that go beyond copyright ownership. In California, for example, simply using “work for hire" language in an independent contractor agreement can trigger unintended employment law consequences, like a potential misclassification claim, making the business liable for payroll tax, unemployment insurance, and worker’s compensation contributions it never intended to take on. A California attorney can help you secure ownership of commissioned content without triggering that kind of unintended liability.
What usage rights agreements contain
A usage rights agreement—also known as a license—typically covers these key terms:
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Scope of use. Identifies where—the platforms, formats, and marketing campaigns—the content can appear. It might specify organic usage rights, allowing you to repost content as it naturally appears on its social media; or paid usage rights, allowing you to run that content as advertising. Paid usage rights often cost more because they give you more influence over targeting, placement, and timing—letting you reach a specific audience rather than relying on organic reach alone.
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Term. Specifies how long the brand can use the content before the rights expire, and any requirements that need to be met for renewal, like a 90-day notice period.
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Territory. Identifies which countries or regions the usage is permitted in.
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Exclusivity. Establishes whether the creator can license the content to another party during the term. Sometimes exclusivity terms are exhaustive—no one else, not even the creator, can use the content during the license term. Sometimes they’re specified to exclusive rights to use in certain regions, media, or industries.
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Modification rights. Spell out whether the licensor can edit or manipulate the content from its original form.
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Attribution requirements. Indicate whether the original creator must be credited, how, and where the attribution must appear.
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Compensation. Covers how the creator is compensated for the license—like a one-time fee for limited or unlimited use, a periodic royalty, or some other custom payment structure, like unlocking bonuses based on a post’s performance or engagement rate.
Usage rights vs. content boosting
Here’s the difference between content boosting and usage rights:
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Content boosting. Also called allowlisting, content boosting is when a brand pays to amplify a creator’s existing post from the creator’s own account, increasing its visibility without changing who owns the content. In this arrangement, a creator grants a business permission to run ads directly through the creator’s account. Since the creator retains ownership, the brand can’t reuse the content beyond the boosted post or even guarantee it stays live. Unless the agreement says otherwise, the creator can edit or take the post down at any time.
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Usage rights. This is when a brand enters an agreement with a creator to take content off the creator’s account and use it on the brand’s own digital platforms, website, or paid advertising.
Celebrity likeness and usage rights
One of the more common legal issues that can arise in influencer content marketing has nothing to do with the photo itself—it’s forgetting that a photo’s usage rights don’t always cover the person in the photo.
Pia Mance, founder of jewelry and accessories brand Heaven Mayhem, has seen this play out when celebrities are photographed in the wild wearing his company’s products. You may be so excited to see your product linked with a famous face that you repost it without thinking through the consequences. But running ads or making marketing claims using a celebrity’s name and likeness crosses into commercial use without the star’s consent.
It’s just not legal to use their name and likeness like that,” Pia says on Shopify Masters. “We can’t run a ton of ads and make all these claims and have them all over our website.”
These issues predate the influencer era. In March 2014, drugstore chain Duane Reade posted a paparazzi photo of actress Katherine Heigl carrying on of its shopping bags to Twitter and Facebook, captioned, “Love a quick #DuaneReade run? Even @KatieHeigl can’t resist shopping #NYC’s favorite drugstore.” But there was no partnership between Heigl and the brand.
Heigl sued Duane Reade for $6 million, alleging the company violated federal and state right-of-publicity and false-advertising laws by improperly exploiting her name and likeness for commercial advertising without her permission or compensation.
The case ended in an out-of-court settlement, with Duane Reade making a donation to Heigl’s charitable foundation—a mostly happy ending, but a cautionary tale about what can happen when clear usage rights aren’t properly secured.
How to use Shopify Collabs to document usage rights
Shopify Collabs is an affiliate marketing app that helps you recruit creators, send direct invites, and manage long-term collaborations with creators—all in one place, rather than negotiating usage rights over individual email chains each time.
You can use a creator’s Collabs profile to keep notes on agreement details like expiration dates and approved scope, alongside the collaboration history and sales performance.
Collabs doesn’t include a dedicated influencer contract generation feature, but it can be your central system for each creator relationship—a single reference point for usage rights arrangements and legal compliance.
Usage rights FAQ
What is the difference between organic and paid usage rights?
Organic usage means you can only post the licensed content as it appears on your own social media. Paid usage rights let you run the content as paid advertising. Organic usage rights tend to cost less than paid because paid usage lets you actively target, promote, and control who sees the content.
What is the difference between content boosting and usage rights?
Content boosting is when you pay to amplify a creator’s existing post from your own account, and the creator retains full, uninterrupted ownership of the content. Usage rights let you take the content and use it on your own channels instead—sometimes, for a time, on an exclusive basis.
What are full usage rights?
Full usage rights let you use the licensed content indefinitely, across any channel, with no expiration date. Because this gives up all future control over how the content is used, creators typically charge a premium fee for this kind of use.
