About Newspaper Licensing Ireland

Newspaper Licensing Ireland (NLI) is a copyright collecting society, we facilitate the commercial use and copying of newspaper, magazine and website content. An NLI licence permits companies and organisations to copy and use articles in accordance with copyright law and with the aim of supporting journalism. NLI was founded in 2002. We are registered with the Irish patent’s office as a copyright licensing body. We are authorised by the Copyright & Related Rights Act 2000 (Section 39).

A NLI licence ensure a seamless and cost-effective way of gaining copyright approval from individual publishers. Our licence will protect an organisation from breaching copyright law. It will also provide assurance that publishers are being rewarded for their work and effort.

It is in the public domain, however it is still under copyright . The publishers who invested in the creation of newspaper or magazine content have the right to (a) commercially benefit from their work and (b) control how that work is used, so you may not copy and distribute their content without permission. That permission comes in the form of a licence from NLI.

The Copyright & Related Rights Act 2000 gives publishers the legal right to protect their intellectual property – their online and print content. Publishers invest heavily in producing original content which is something we all value. The licensing system is really an incentive for publishers to keep producing what they are producing. If an organisation wants to make a copy of a published work, it will need permission from the copyright owner. In the case of newspapers, this is granted by individual publisher permission or an NLI licence.

Yes, you do. Publishers own the copyright to their online content. Newspapers make huge investments in creating their online content, often with original content that does not appear in print, and they need to be compensated for their efforts.

Everything as it appears in a published edition of a newspaper, both online and in print is the property of the publishers. Your press release has a lot more value when it appears in a published newspaper or magazine.

Without a licence from NLI, you do not have permission to access, copy, share or otherwise use copyrighted newspaper and magazine content in a commercial context. If you engage in these activities without a licence from NLI, you may be in breach of copyright law and could be subject to legal proceedings.

Yes, you do. The MMOs/PR companies do not own the content they send to you, our publishers do. You need our publisher’s permission to view their content and our licence grants that permission.

We are expressly mandated by the newspaper publishers whose work appears in our portfolio to authorise media monitoring and other reproduction on their behalf. We are mandated by the Irish Copyright and Licensing Agency (ICLA) to authorise media monitoring and other reproduction of the magazines whose work appears in our portfolio. NLI is registered with the Patents Office on the Register of Copyright Licensing Bodies.

Licence fees are calculated on the basis of the number of employees in the organisation or, in the case of Media Monitoring Organisations, the number of clients.

By basing the licence fee on the total number of employees, it ensures that all employees are then covered to copy, share and use content – even if not all employees access the material directly. Furthermore, as licence tariffs are registered with the Patents Office, individual deals cannot be negotiated but must all be based on employee numbers.