Attribution clause: credit lines and moral rights

Sample clause

Written for photo licence between Moretti Studio, a fictional architectural photographer, and The Carraway Hotel, a fictional boutique hotel.

Credit. (a) Where the Client uses an Image on its website or in printed material, it will credit the Photographer next to the Image, or in the credits section of the page or publication, as: Photo: Moretti Studio. (b) On social media, the Client will tag @morettistudio in the post or the first comment. (c) No credit is required where it is not reasonably practicable, such as in a thumbnail, a background image behind text or a paid advertisement smaller than 300 pixels wide. (d) The Client must not credit the Images to anyone else, or credit the Photographer for any image it did not take. (e) An accidental omission of credit is not a breach if the Client adds the credit within 5 business days after being told of it.

Sample wording, not legal advice.

Variants

What to negotiate

• Exact wording and placement

  A credit that is buried or misspelled does little for the creator. The clause should give the exact form, such as Photo: Moretti Studio, and say where it goes: next to the work, in a credits section, or as a tag. Clients prefer flexibility on placement; creators prefer the credit next to the work.

• Reasonable exceptions

  Credits are impractical in thumbnails, small ads and some designs. Listing those exceptions, as the sample does, protects the client from technical breaches while keeping the credit where it matters. A short cure period for accidental omissions avoids disputes over a forgotten caption.

• Moral rights cannot be assigned

  In Australia a creator's moral rights belong to them personally and cannot be assigned, even when copyright is. A client that needs to use work without a credit or alter it substantially should obtain a written consent covering those acts. The moral rights consent clause page covers consents in detail.

The risk of leaving it out

Without an attribution clause, a client may use work with no credit, which can infringe the creator's moral right of attribution where it was reasonable to credit them, or credit the wrong person, which can infringe the right against false attribution. A creator relying only on moral rights has less certainty than a clause gives about the wording and placement.

The moral right of attribution

Part IX of the Copyright Act 1968 gives individual creators three moral rights: the right of attribution of authorship, the right not to have authorship falsely attributed, and the right of integrity, not to have the work subjected to derogatory treatment. The right of attribution is not infringed if it was reasonable in all the circumstances not to attribute, and a creator can give written consent to acts that would otherwise infringe. Law checked on 21 October 2026. This page explains how the law works and is not legal advice.

Credits in the examples

The photo licence example sets the term, copyright and credit together, with a credit line for the hotel's use of architectural images. The music licence example covers fee, credit and warranties in one section, so the composer's credit sits beside the payment. The wedding photography example takes the opposite approach for personal use, with no credit required, and keeps commercial use subject to consent.

Credits and licences together

Attribution is often part of the price. A creator may accept a lower fee in return for a prominent credit, or charge more for use without credit. Linking the credit to the licence, so a use without the required credit is outside the licence, gives the creator a copyright remedy as well as a contract one; a client should push for the cure period so that a forgotten credit does not put it in breach of copyright.

Where the clause sits in a generated document

Photo, music and trade mark licences, design contracts and publishing agreements carry this clause beside the licence grant. When asking the AI document generator for one, give the exact credit line, where it appears on each channel, the exceptions, any cure period and any moral rights consent.

Documents that carry this clause

Photo licence agreement covering media, territory and durationA photo licence says which images, for which uses, for how long. Everything else is detail. This one licenses twelve hotel images to the hotel that commissioned them for three years worldwide at $2,400, with a table that marks paid advertising as an extra and resale as not available at any price.Music licence agreement for sync use, term and creditsMusic carries two rights, the composition and the recording, and a sync licence needs both. This one works because the composer owns both: one fee of $900 covers a single track in a single brand film, worldwide for two years, with paid social at twelve months and broadcast and cinema left off the list.Photography contract template with deliverables you can countA photography contract is mostly a list of numbers: hours, images, weeks, dollars and the date after which the deposit is gone. This one writes every number down, then handles the three things that go wrong with weddings, a postponement, a sick photographer and an argument over who owns the photos.

Questions people ask