Extended collective licenses allow the use of many works at the same time — including works of rights holders who do not have a management agreement with ProLitteris.

ProLitteris may grant such licenses if the statutory requirements according to Art. 43a CopA are fulfilled.

To date, ProLitteris offers an extended collective license for the following uses:

• Publications of memory institutions when archives or collections are made accessible on the internet
• Uses that exceed statutory limitations in copyright law in a non-serious way, e.g. for collection inventories, journalistic reporting or exhibition catalogues
• Uses for purely internal applications of artificial intelligence, e.g. for Copilot and similar AI tools

The extended collective licenses enable uses in new areas without the need to revise the Copyright Act. ProLitteris supports this statutory instrument in the interest of rights holders and users.

If works are created with AI, then according to the general rule in copyright law they are protected and eligible for royalties only if an original, individual human creation is expressed. 

What is decisive is not a specific AI share, but the personal creative contribution of one person or of several people working together. If AI is merely used as a tool and a human being substantially shapes the result, then in most cases there is a protected work. If, on the other hand, AI takes over the creation without any recognizable individual human shaping, then no work arises within the meaning of the Copyright Act and there is no copyright protection, and ProLitteris does not distribute any royalty for this product.

By declaring a work with ProLitteris, you as author or publishing house confirm:

• That it is a work within the meaning of the Copyright Act.
• That you have created or published the work.

In addition, you must ensure that a work does not infringe any third-party rights and that the use of artificial intelligence does not occur in a way that prevents a work from coming into being.

ProLitteris relies on the information and confirmation provided by rights holders and can carry out inspections at any time. ProLitteris monitors the development of technology and the use of AI and comments on it regularly.

For your works to be taken into account, two conditions must be met: your authorship and the nature of the work under copyright law.

Your work must be an individual human creation. Content without its own creative contribution is not admissible, such as purely AI-generated results or texts and images that have been taken over in full or for the most part from third-party sources.

ProLitteris can request evidence from you in order to verify your authorship and the quality as a work. In addition, random checks are carried out to ensure the accuracy and admissibility of the declarations.

ProLitteris offers licenses under the Common Tariffs (CT) in the name of all collecting societies.

These include the royalty for copying in schools and organizations (Common Tariffs 7 and 8), for renting in libraries and video rental stores (Common Tariff 5), and for uses by people with disabilities (Common Tariff 10).

In these cases, ProLitteris is responsible, in the name of all domestic and foreign collecting societies, for collecting and distributing the royalties.

In addition, ProLitteris grants contractual licenses. In these cases, specific works are licensed upon request from the licensees.

You can obtain a contractual license from ProLitteris if you wish to do the following:

• Reproduce specific artworks on the internet, in books, as printed matter, or in another form, provided that the artist concerned is represented by ProLitteris (Sector Art)
• Use specific works from collections or archives, provided that the rights holders are unknown or cannot be located (Tariff CT 13 for orphan works)
• Use a large number of texts or images, provided that the normal management of the rights is not impaired in this way, for example for "open archive", for internally used AI systems, or for minor extensions of statutory limitations (extended collective license, ECL)
• Use texts and other literary works as a broadcasting organization (Sector Audio)

With a license from ProLitteris, you keep copyright under control. In return for a transparent and moderate royalty, you ensure that no rights of authors, artists, photographers, publishing houses, and other rights holders are infringed.

ProLitteris grants extended collective licenses (ECL) for the internal use of artificial intelligence with services such as Copilot, Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude or Apertus.

As a rights holder, user or licensee, you can obtain information on copyright from ProLitteris at any time.

ProLitteris helps to ensure that fair framework conditions also exist in the field of artificial intelligence.

Pure AI outputs are not works within the meaning of the Copyright Act (URG). However, products that were created with AI are protected by copyright if they constitute a human intellectual creation with an individual character.

This is the case:

• if a prompt is so creative and detailed that it itself has the character of a work,
• and if this individual design is recognizable in the result generated by the AI.

In addition, so-called related rights can arise in an audio (sound carrier) or video (audiovisual carrier).

If you work with AI, it is advisable to document your own creative contribution. This way you can later prove that a protected work exists.

In the view of legal experts and in the assessment of ProLitteris, training AI systems with protected works requires the consent of the rights holders.

The question is the subject of court proceedings abroad. At the same time, statutory solutions are being discussed in order to clearly regulate the use of works for AI systems and to provide appropriate royalties.

In this situation, ProLitteris offers an extended collective license (ECL) so that companies can use internal AI systems in a legally secure way.

You can explicitly state on your website that the training of AI systems is only permitted with your consent. This makes your position clear and documents your rights.

Possible wording includes:

• "Training of AI systems only with specific consent"
• International: "Opt-out for uses with artificial intelligence under the EU directive on text and data mining"

The practical benefit is currently limited, because the legal situation is unclear and AI systems often do not take such statements into account.

AI systems allow protected works to be uploaded to an AI application in order to translate, summarize, or analyze them. 

In the opinion of ProLitteris, this processing requires consent. Such consent exists in the personal sphere and in teaching, because the Copyright Act defines a corresponding freedom of use (Art. 19 para. 1 let. a and b CopA). For companies, there is no such statutory permission—there is only one for reproductions for internal information and documentation.

For you, this means: When you upload texts, images, music, or other protected content to an AI, you use these works under copyright law.

For companies, ProLitteris offers an extended collective license (ECL). Instead of obtaining individual consents from rights holders, the ECL from ProLitteris covers internal systems such as Copilot.

Enforcing copyrights against artificial intelligence is difficult. ProLitteris supports adapting the Copyright Act to strengthen rights and clarify uses.

In the view of ProLitteris, the law would provide protection, but it encounters practical limits in the case of international uses. In addition, ProLitteris does not hold the rights to bring legal action itself against AI services.