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 pursuant to Art. 43a CopA are met.

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

• Publications by memory institutions when archives or collections are made accessible on the Internet
• Uses that exceed statutory limitations in a non-substantial way, e.g. for collection catalogues, 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 several people working together. If AI is used merely as a tool and a human being substantially shapes the result, then in most cases a protected work exists. If, on the other hand, AI takes over the creation without any recognizable original 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 confirm as author or publishing house:

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

Furthermore, you must ensure that a work does not infringe third‑party rights and that the use of artificial intelligence does not take place in a way that prevents a work from coming into existence.

ProLitteris relies on the information and confirmation of the rightsholders and can carry out checks at any time. ProLitteris follows 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 status of the work under copyright law.

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

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

ProLitteris offers licenses under the common tariffs (CT) on behalf of all collective management organizations.

These include the royalty for copying in schools and organizations (common tariffs 7 and 8), for rental 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, on behalf of all domestic and foreign collective management organizations, for collecting and distributing the royalties.

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

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

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

With a license from ProLitteris, you have 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 rightsholder, user or licensee, you can obtain information from ProLitteris about copyright at any time.

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

Pure AI outputs are not works within the meaning of the Copyright Act (URG). However, outputs that were created with AI are protected by copyright if there is 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 AI result.

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

If you work with AI, it is advisable to document your own creative contribution. This allows you to prove later 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 compliant 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 transferred into an AI application in order to translate, summarize, or analyze them. \^

In the view of ProLitteris, this processing requires consent. This 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, such a statutory permission is missing – it only exists for reproductions for internal information and documentation.

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

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

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

In ProLitteris’ view, the law would provide protection, but in practice it reaches its limits in the context of international use. In addition, ProLitteris does not hold the rights needed to take legal action itself against AI services.