The extended collective licence (ECL) is a mechanism provided for by the EU Directive of 17 April 2019 and incorporated into the French Intellectual Property Code (articles L. 324-8-1 and following). It allows an accredited collective management organisation (such as ADAGP) to “extend a licence”, that is, a contract authorising the exploitation of its members’ works applied to non-member authors for the exploitation of the same type of works.
The specific cases that allow the use of ECLs:
- The exploitation of works in digital form by educational establishments for illustration purposes, as part of their teaching activities (art. L. 122-5-4 of the French Intellectual Property Code);
- The exploitation of visual artworks by content-sharing platforms (art. L. 137-2-1 of the French Intellectual Property Code);
- The exploitation of visual artworks within scientific works openly released on the Internet (art. L. 139-1 of the French Intellectual Property Code).
ADAGP was accredited by decree on 13 September 2022. As such, ADAGP is authorised to ask the Ministry to extend licences to non-member creators in the above cases of exploitation of works from its repertoire. Non-member creators will then be able to receive, in the same way as ADAGP members, a portion of the amounts collected under such licences.
If non-member artists and rights holders do not wish to benefit from this scheme, they may notify the organisation of their opposition at any time, which the organisation must take into account within 3 months (see below).