Copyright and licences for your own projects

In short: What you write, draw or compose yourself belongs to you automatically: copyright arises with the creation, without registration. But without a licence nobody else may use it, so every project others should use needs a clear licence.

What applies automatically

• Copyright lies with the author, the person who created it creatively. In Germany it cannot be transferred, but you can grant rights of use.
• It lasts until 70 years after the author’s death.
• Protection requires an own intellectual creation. Ideas, concepts and ways of working are not protected; the concrete source code, text or picture is.

Publishing your own software

1. Choose a licence (Open-source licences): MIT/Apache for “do what you want with it”, GPL if improvements should stay free.
2. File LICENSE in the repository, note in the README (README file).
3. Use third-party code only with a suitable licence and keep the copyright notice.
4. Contributors: whoever accepts contributions should clarify that they are under the same licence.

Commissioned work and employers

• For commissioned work the contract regulates which rights the client gets. Without a contract only the purpose recognisable from the order is transferred. Better to fix it in writing.
• For employees the rights to software created at work normally belong to the employer (§ 69b UrhG). Apprentices and interns: read contracts before mixing private work with company material.

Pictures, music, fonts

Use only with permission or a free licence (for example Creative Commons with attribution). “Found on Google” does not mean free. See also the page “Licences and sources” of this website.

AI content

Works generated purely by machine are, according to the prevailing view in Germany, not protected by copyright because the human creation is missing; details are in flux, see Training data, copyright and privacy in AI.

Not legal advice.

See also: Contracts and terms for small founders