Updated: September 10, 2026
Your video is made of other people's work
A finished corporate video usually contains material the production company does not own: a music track, a few seconds of stock footage, a typeface, a software plugin, occasionally an archive photograph. Each of those arrives with a licence attached, and those licences have terms.
This matters to a buyer for one practical reason. The rights you hold in the finished film are limited by the narrowest licence inside it. You can own the edit outright and still be unable to run it as a paid advertisement, because the music licence did not cover that.
Music
Music is the most common restriction and the one most likely to cause a problem later.
Library music is usually licensed per project, and the terms vary widely. Some licences cover any use indefinitely. Others are limited by term, by media, or by whether the video carries paid promotion behind it. A track cleared for organic social use may not be cleared for a broadcast campaign.
Subscription libraries add a wrinkle worth understanding. Many allow you to keep using material created while the subscription was active, and some do not. If your producer licensed the music under their subscription, ask what happens if that subscription lapses.
Commercial recordings, meaning music you know from the radio, are a different category entirely and are rarely affordable for corporate work. Where a client insists, expect a negotiation with the publisher and the label, a substantial cost, and a term limit.
Stock footage and images
Stock is licensed rather than sold, and the two common categories behave differently.
A standard licence typically covers ordinary commercial use with limits on distribution scale, and it is not exclusive, which means a competitor may use the same shot. An extended licence covers larger distribution, broadcast or use in a product for resale, and costs more.
Two restrictions catch people out. Most stock licences prohibit using the material in a way that implies endorsement by anyone appearing in it, which rules out certain testimonial-style edits. And many prohibit use in sensitive contexts, defined broadly enough to include health, finance and anything that could be seen as unflattering to a person in the footage.
Ask for a list of any stock used in your video, with the licence type. It is a two-minute request that answers every future question about what you can do with the film.
Fonts
The one nobody thinks about, and a real risk in corporate work.
A typeface is software with its own licence, and the licence for desktop use in documents does not automatically cover use in broadcast video or in an animated logo. Some foundries charge separately for video and broadcast use, and some price by audience size.
Where your brand guidelines specify a typeface, the safest position is to confirm your organisation's licence covers video, and to tell the producer which licence applies. Where it does not, either extend the licence or agree a substitute, and do that before the graphics are built rather than after.
This also applies to fonts inside templates a producer may use. A motion graphics template bought from a marketplace may include a font that is licensed to the template maker rather than to you.
People, archives and everything else
Talent releases have terms, as covered separately, and they run alongside the film's own rights rather than inside them.
Archive material carries its own permissions, and historical footage or photographs often have complicated ownership. If your video includes anything from a company archive, check that the organisation actually holds the rights rather than simply the physical copy. A photograph taken by a hired photographer in 1998 may still belong to that photographer.
Locations can carry restrictions too. Some venues, museums and buildings limit commercial filming or require a separate licence for the resulting footage. Where a distinctive building or an artwork is a major element of a shot, that is worth checking rather than assuming.
Third-party brands appearing incidentally are usually fine and become a problem when they are prominent or imply a relationship. A laptop with a visible logo in a wide shot is ordinary; the same logo filling the frame in an advertisement is not.
Software, templates and the tools used to make it
One more category sits behind the finished file and rarely reaches a client's attention until something goes wrong.
Motion graphics templates bought from a marketplace carry their own terms, and some restrict use in work produced for a third party or in anything broadcast. A producer using such a template on your project should be licensed for that use, and it is fair to ask whether they are.
Plugins and effects used in the edit sometimes leave a dependency in the project file. That matters if you ever take the project to a different editor, who will need the same plugin to open it correctly. Ask for a note of anything unusual alongside the project files if you are receiving them.
Artificial intelligence tools introduce a newer version of the same question. Where generated imagery, synthetic voice or an upscaled clip appears in a video, the terms attached to the tool decide what commercial use is permitted, and those terms vary widely and change often. If your organisation has a policy on this, state it in the brief rather than assuming a producer shares it.
The general principle holds across all of these. Anything in the film that came from somewhere else has terms, and the time to establish them is before it goes in.
What to ask for at delivery
Request an asset and licence schedule alongside the finished files. It should list every third-party element, what licence covers it, any expiry, and any restriction on use.
File it with the contract. Three years later, when someone in marketing wants to run the film as a paid campaign in another country, that single document answers the question in a minute instead of triggering a week of archaeology.
Ask also what happens if you want to extend. Some licences can be upgraded retrospectively for a fee, which is far cheaper than reworking a finished film. Knowing that in advance turns a potential problem into a purchase order.
Planning around it from the start
The cheapest moment to solve all of this is at the brief. If you know the video may run as paid media, in multiple territories, or for many years, say so before production begins. Licences bought with that in mind cost a little more and cost far less than replacing music in a finished film.
The same applies to versions. If a Spanish language version is likely, or a shorter cut for social, mention it early so licences and assets are acquired with that scope. Building it in is inexpensive; retrofitting is not.
These details belong in the written scope alongside deliverables and ownership, which is covered in the statement of work, and they are one of the reasons two quotes for apparently identical work can differ, as explained in comparing quotes apples to apples.
We supply a licence schedule with every finished project and flag any element with a term limit before it is used. More on commissioning video is on the blog and the about page. If you have a video you want to reuse and are unsure whether you may, send us the details.