eBooks | News Story

Licence to Chill: Launching the 100 Contracts Study

16 July 2026

Libraries are essential infrastructures for research, education, culture, and lifelong learning. Every day, academic, public, research, and school libraries connect people with knowledge, preserve cultural heritage, and support innovation. To fulfil these missions, libraries rely on legal rights that allow them to use copyrighted materials in the public interest.

Knowledge Rights 21 is pleased to launch the 100 Contracts Study, a research project examining how licensing agreements affect libraries’ ability to exercise those rights.

Inspired by a 2008 British Library analysis of licensing agreements, this study, conducted between February and August 2023, evaluates 100 contracts between publishers and academic and public libraries across 14 Council of Europe countries. It draws on a dataset of licensing agreements sourced from libraries within the KR21 and IFLA networks, as well as information consortia, and publicly available publisher terms.

The study combines qualitative and quantitative analysis to assess the extent to which contractual terms support or restrict core library activities that are otherwise typically permitted under copyright law. It systematically organises its findings into categories that reflect activities such as personal use, teaching, research, accessibility for persons with disabilities, archiving, and inter-library document supply, as well as broader contractual conditions, including governing law, time limitations, and user restrictions.

Given the reliance on the public availability of contracts, or the readiness of libraries to share, it is not possible to claim perfect representativeness. However, what the study does do is give a helpful indication of the challenges faced by libraries across Europe in working with licensed content.

At the heart of the project is a detailed table of contractual provisions. This resource is available both as an appendix to the report and as an interactive live database. The potential restrictiveness of licensing clauses is evaluated against a common benchmark – mostly EU copyright exceptions – for each category, supported by quotes from the studied contracts.

This representation of the data aims to enable researchers, policymakers, library professionals, and civil society organisations to explore the research findings and draw their own conclusions. To ensure confidentiality, identifying details of institutions and publishers in the contractual provisions are replaced with standardised terms.

Main Questions of the 100 Contracts Study

The study focuses on three key issues. First, it examines whether the studied contracts contain general clauses providing for the override of statutory exceptions and limitations. Second, the study investigates how licensing agreements regulate day-to-day library activities. It asks whether contracts authorise uses that correspond to copyright exceptions and limitations, or whether they leave libraries uncertain about what they may lawfully do.

Third, the research explores the impact of governing law clauses. Many contracts place the contractual relationship under the law of the publisher’s jurisdiction rather than that of the library. The study considers how the application of foreign law may affect libraries’ ability to rely on domestic copyright exceptions.

The findings reveal several important trends.

Contracts bypass law: Where contracts directly address the relationship between copyright law and contractual terms, the majority favour contractual override. In practice, this means that uses permitted by law are often excluded unless expressly authorised by the contract itself. At the same time, many agreements remain silent on this relationship or contain unclear and sometimes contradictory provisions, creating significant legal uncertainty for libraries and educational institutions.

Silence on core functions: The research also found that most contracts explicitly permit only a limited number of common library activities while remaining silent on many other functions essential to library missions. It is relatively rare for contractual permissions to align closely with the scope and language of statutory copyright exceptions. As a result, libraries are often required to undertake complex legal analysis or negotiations simply to determine whether they could engage in routine activities.

Jurisdictional mismatch: A further area of concern is the use of foreign governing law clauses. Many contracts are governed by the laws of countries other than those in which the libraries are located, frequently the United States or the United Kingdom. This can create substantial uncertainty and may undermine libraries’ ability to rely on domestic copyright exceptions, including imperative (non-overridable) protections that national legislatures intended to safeguard the public interest.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The findings of the study suggest that contractual arrangements can have a significant chilling effect on the use of copyrighted materials in the public interest. When legal rights become uncertain, institutions tend to act cautiously, limiting activities that may in fact be lawful.

The report, therefore, highlights the need for stronger legal and policy protections. One key recommendation is that national legislators should recognise copyright exceptions and limitations as imperative by default, ensuring that contracts cannot override the minimum rights granted by law. Such an approach would provide greater legal certainty and help safeguard the ability of libraries and educational institutions to serve their communities.

The report also calls for further research into measures that could protect public-interest institutions from the effects of foreign governing law clauses. At the same time, libraries and national consortia should continue to seek the application of domestic law in licensing negotiations and explore the development of standard contractual clauses that preserve statutory rights.

The 100 Contracts Study offers an evidence-based foundation for these discussions. By documenting how licensing agreements operate in practice, it sheds light on an area where contract law, copyright law, and the public interest intersect.

We invite policymakers, researchers and advocates to explore the findings, engage with the data, and join the conversation about how best to ensure that licensing practices support, rather than undermine, the vital public missions of libraries.