ATTRIBUTION
DEFINITION
Attribution is the acknowledgement of a work's creator, usually by name, required either by license terms, moral rights law, or simple professional convention.
WHAT IT MEANS IN PRACTICE
In many jurisdictions attribution is a moral right that survives even after economic rights are sold or licensed away, meaning a maker can retain the right to be credited even after a client owns the work outright. The strength of this right varies, with EU countries generally treating it as stronger and harder to waive than the US does.
Many open licenses, such as Creative Commons attribution variants, make crediting the creator a mandatory condition of use rather than a courtesy, and failing to credit properly can itself constitute a license breach separate from any copyright infringement.
Attribution disputes are common in commissioned work, where a client may prefer not to name the maker for branding reasons, so the right to be credited, or not, should be addressed explicitly in the contract rather than assumed.
AN EXAMPLE
A design studio uses Hana's illustration under a Creative Commons attribution license but publishes it without her name anywhere on the page. Even though the underlying use was permitted, the missing credit is itself a breach of the license terms.
WATCH OUT
Selling full economic rights to a work does not automatically waive a maker's moral right to be credited, depending on the jurisdiction.
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