Assignment, and why a licence cannot be promised as one
Assignment transfers rights to somebody else; a licence permits them to be used. Agency and client contracts routinely ask for assignment of everything in a deliverable, and generated material often cannot be assigned at all. As of 2026-09-22.
| Question | What the phrase answers |
|---|---|
| Assignment | Transfers what the assignor holds |
| Licence | Permits use without transferring anything |
| Sublicence | Passes on a permission that was received |
| A client contract | Usually asks for assignment, by default wording |
Inclusion rule. Phrases that appear in more than one vendor's permissions documents and that change what a sentence means. A phrase used by a single vendor in a single clause is described on that vendor's own page instead. Order. Reading order: where you meet it, then what it settles, then what it does not.
1The mismatch is discovered by a lawyer, late
An agency signs a client contract promising assignment of all rights in the deliverable. The same agency holds, at best, a non-transferable licence over part of what is in the file. Both documents are normal and they cannot both be satisfied.
This turns up long after delivery, usually when the client wants to register something or to move a campaign to a different supplier. By then the asset exists and the paperwork does not match it.
2What can be assigned in a generated deliverable
The human layers, to the extent they are protected: the writing, the choices about what to keep and in what order, the edits. Those are the parts a production actually contributed and can document.
What cannot be assigned is somebody else's material: bundled stock, a licensed voice, a model's weights. A schedule that lists what is licensed rather than assigned is the honest fix, and it is a paragraph long.
3The clause to look for in a supplier's document
Whether the permission is transferable or sublicensable. If neither word appears, the safe reading is that the permission stops with the account, which decides whether an agency can promise anything at all.
A register records what the supplier published. Reconciling it with a client contract is work for whoever drafted the contract, and it is much cheaper before the deliverable exists than after.
4What the output is for
Alongside the terms behind “Assignment”, SceneMixer's guides describe the work itself this way:
You can recomposite with different end-card text, and in step-by-step mode you can reshoot individual segments. The finished file can also be downloaded and shared with a link.
SceneMixer, How to Make an Ad from One Photo — “Can I change the ad after it is finished?” (read 2026-10-13)
On a segment’s card, Insert adds a blank segment right after it: write its header and shots.
SceneMixer, Inserting and Deleting Segments (read 2026-10-13)
5Where the sourced wording is
A word page, not an entry in the register: nothing above is attributed to any vendor and nothing above is legal advice. The quoted clauses are on commercial use, the column this phrase turns up in is what is owned, and the reading rules are on the reading page. Next words: Consent, Likeness, Stock avatar.