Who owns the photos? Image rights and licensing for marketers

Who owns a photo the moment it is taken?

Under the Danish Copyright Act (ophavsretsloven), copyright arises automatically when a photo is made. There is no registration, and no © symbol is needed. The first owner is the person who pressed the shutter. Not the company that paid for the day, not the person in the picture and not the agency that booked the photographer.

Danish law protects photographs on two levels. Images that reflect enough creative choices count as photographic works and are protected for the photographer’s lifetime plus 70 years. Ordinary photographs that do not reach that level still have their own protection, which runs for 50 years from the end of the year they were taken. In practice almost every image you might want in a campaign is protected by someone, including quick phone pictures from an event.

The photographer also keeps moral rights. They are entitled to be credited in line with good practice, and they can object if an image is changed or used in a way that harms their reputation or character as a creator. Moral rights cannot be sold the way economic rights can. A photographer can, however, accept limited waivers, for example agreeing to crops or to no credit line on ads.

Paying for a shoot buys a licence, not the copyright

Most commercial photography in Denmark is sold as a licence. You pay for the shoot and for the right to use the results in agreed ways. The photographer keeps the copyright and, unless the contract stops them, may show the images in a portfolio or license them to others. This surprises plenty of marketing teams, who assume an invoice equals ownership.

A full transfer of copyright is possible, but it is a separate decision and usually priced higher. For most brands a well-scoped licence is enough. What matters is that the scope matches how you will actually use the images over the next few years, including uses nobody has budgeted for yet.

Vague wording tends to work against the buyer. Danish courts generally read licences narrowly in the creator’s favour, an approach often called the specification principle: if a use is not clearly covered, assume it is not. “Images for marketing use” invites an argument. “Website, organic and paid social, and print in the Nordic countries, perpetual, with the right to crop and add text” usually does not.

Staff, freelancers and agencies

Where the images come from changes who holds the rights, and how much paperwork you need.

• Employees. Denmark has no general statutory rule that hands copyright to employers, apart from software. Case law usually gives the employer the rights it needs for its ordinary business, but the edges are blurred. If staff shoot for marketing, say so in the employment contract or a staff policy.
• Freelancers. A freelance photographer owns the copyright unless a contract transfers it. Without a written licence you are relying on what a court would read into emails and invoices.
• Agencies. When an agency hires the photographer, check that the agency’s own contract covers everything it promises you. Nobody can pass on rights they never received.
• Volunteers and interns. The same logic applies, usually with fewer contracts in place. Get a short written agreement before the event rather than after it.

Event photography deserves its own note. Conference and launch pictures often end up in sales decks, recruitment pages and ads years later. When you book event coverage, agree at the start that the images may be used for future marketing, and by whom. A lot of our copyright guidance work begins with exactly this kind of audit of old event folders.

People in the picture: consent and GDPR

Licensing the copyright does not settle whether you may show the people in an image. That is a separate set of rules, and for marketers it is the one that causes most trouble.

A photo of an identifiable person is personal data under the GDPR. The Danish Data Protection Agency (Datatilsynet) has long distinguished between situation pictures, which show an activity or scene such as a crowd at a concert, and portrait pictures, where one or a few people are clearly the subject. Situation pictures can often be published without consent if they do not offend the people shown. Portrait pictures generally need consent. The Copyright Act adds its own rule that a photographic portrait may not be exhibited without the subject’s permission, and using someone to front an advertisement without agreement is likely to breach good marketing practice.

The working rule for commercial use is simple. If a person is recognisable and the image is selling something, get written consent, usually called a model release. A good release states which images, which uses, for how long and how the person can withdraw. Consent under the GDPR can be withdrawn, so keep a record of who appears where.

Some groups need extra care. For children, ask a parent or guardian and think twice before naming them. Employees can consent, but because of the imbalance of power the consent has to be genuinely voluntary, and someone who leaves may reasonably ask to come off the careers page.

Objects can matter as well. Danish law lets you depict buildings freely, and artworks permanently placed in public spaces, but not where the artwork is the main motif and the use is commercial. Other companies’ logos in a hero shot can raise trademark questions, so keep them out of frame or out of focus.

Stock, social media and AI images

Stock images are licensed, never owned. “Royalty-free” means you pay once rather than per use. It does not mean free of copyright or free of conditions. Standard stock licences commonly cap print runs, ban use in logos, restrict sensitive uses of identifiable models, and rule out advertising for anything marked editorial use only. Editorial images often lack model and property releases, which is exactly why they cannot be used to sell.

Pictures on Instagram or in Google results are not available just because they are public. Reposting a customer’s photo of your product feels harmless, yet the customer holds the copyright. Ask, keep the reply and credit them. Platform terms give the platform a licence to show the content, not you.

AI-generated images raise newer questions. Under EU case law, copyright protects works that reflect a human author’s own intellectual creation, so an image made with minimal human input may not be protected at all. That cuts both ways: you may be unable to stop others copying it, and the tool’s terms decide what you may do with the output. Read those terms, avoid prompts that imitate a named photographer or another brand, and label realistic synthetic people. Since August 2026 the EU AI Act has required deployers to disclose deepfakes, meaning realistic synthetic images of people, places or events, with some exceptions.

If you want imagery with clean rights from day one, commissioning brand photography under a written licence is usually simpler than stitching together stock and user content.

A paper trail you can still find in two years

Rights problems tend to surface long after the shoot: a new campaign, a rebrand, a demand letter, a buyer’s due diligence. The fix is dull and effective. For every image set, keep:

1. the contract or licence, with media, territory, duration and editing rights spelled out;
2. the model releases, linked to the specific images they cover;
3. the photographer’s name and the credit line they expect;
4. for stock, the licence certificate or download record and the licence type;
5. an expiry date in your asset library, so campaign images do not quietly outlive their licence.

Store this with the images in your asset library or shared drive, not in one person’s inbox. Many photographers also embed copyright and contact details in the file’s IPTC metadata, which survives most exports and helps when an image turns up years later without context.

A note on scope: this is general information about Danish and EU rules, not legal advice. For high-value campaigns, international use or a dispute, speak to a lawyer who works with intellectual property. For the everyday job of keeping your library clean, see how we handle copyright-safe content.