Royalty free
Encyclopedia
Royalty-Free, or RF, refers to the right to use copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...

ed material or intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...

 without the need to pay royalties
Royalties
Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...

 for each use or per volume sold, or some time period of use or sales.

Computer standards

Many computer industry standards, especially those developed and submitted by industry consortiums or individual companies, involve royalties for the actual use of these standards. These royalties are typically charged on a "per port" basis, where the manufacturer of end-user devices has to pay a small fixed fee for each device sold. With millions of devices sold each year, the royalties can amount to several millions of dollars, which is a significant burden for the manufacturer. Examples of such royalties-based standards include FireWire, HDMI
HDMI
HDMI is a compact audio/video interface for transmitting uncompressed digital data. It is a digital alternative to consumer analog standards, such as radio frequency coaxial cable, composite video, S-Video, SCART, component video, D-Terminal, or VGA...

, and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC is a standard for video compression, and is currently one of the most commonly used formats for the recording, compression, and distribution of high definition video...

.

Royalty-free standards do not include any "per-port" or "per-volume" charges or annual payments for the use of the standard, even though the text of the actual specification is typically protected by copyright and needs to be purchased from the standards body.

Most open standard
Open standard
An open standard is a standard that is publicly available and has various rights to use associated with it, and may also have various properties of how it was designed . There is no single definition and interpretations vary with usage....

s are royalty-free, and many proprietary standards are royalty-free as well.

Photography and Illustrations

In photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

 and the illustration
Illustration
An illustration is a displayed visualization form presented as a drawing, painting, photograph or other work of art that is created to elucidate or dictate sensual information by providing a visual representation graphically.- Early history :The earliest forms of illustration were prehistoric...

 industry, refers to a copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...

 license where the user has the one-time right to use the photo without very many restrictions. Licenses vary by each site so its important to read the License Agreement prior to licensing. The user can therefore use the image in several projects without having to purchase any additional licenses. RF licenses can not be given on an exclusive basis. In stock photography RF is one of the four common licenses or business models together with Rights Managed
Rights Managed
Rights Managed, or RM, in photography and the stock photo industry, refers to a copyright license which, if purchased by a user, allows the one time use of the photo as specified by the license. If the user wants to use the photo for other uses an additional license needs to be purchased. RM...

, subscription and micro.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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