Rights & Intellectual Property

Your Work Stays Yours — 100%

You keep every ounce of ownership and copyright in the film or screenplay you submit. Always. Submitting to Liverpool Indie Awards does not transfer your rights, and it never will.

We built this festival for filmmakers and screenwriters, and we know the question that sits at the back of every creator's mind before they hit "submit": will they take my work, or do something with it I never agreed to? The short, honest answer is no. This page explains exactly what happens to your work when you enter, in plain English — and, just as importantly, what we are not allowed to do with it.

If you read nothing else, read this: you own your work before you submit, while we judge it, and forever after. We only ever ask for the narrow permission we need to actually run the festival — and nothing beyond it.

Last updated: 16 June 2026

1. You retain all ownership and copyright

You (or whoever you've cleared the rights with) remain the sole and exclusive owner of your film or screenplay and all intellectual property in it. That includes the copyright, the underlying ideas, the characters, the script, the footage, the music, the edit — everything.

Entering Liverpool Indie Awards changes none of that. There is no transfer of ownership, no assignment of copyright, and no "we now co-own this" clause hidden anywhere in our terms. Your work is yours when you arrive and yours when you leave, whether you win, lose, get selected, or withdraw.

2. The only permission you give us (the limited licence)

To judge your work and to run a live festival, we need a small, clearly-bounded permission from you. In legal terms this is a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence — "non-exclusive" means you keep the right to do whatever you like with your work elsewhere, and "royalty-free" means neither of us owes the other any payment for this permission.

That permission is limited to two things, and only two:

(a) Judging. We may view, stream privately, read, and evaluate your work for the purpose of jury consideration in the edition of the festival you entered. This permission is held by us, the members of our jury, and our authorised festival team solely for that purpose.

(b) Promotion — but only if your work is officially selected. If, and only if, your work is officially selected for the festival, we may:

  • publicly screen the work as part of the live festival event in Liverpool (for screenplay categories, "screen" means the relevant programmed presentation of the selected script);
  • use short excerpts of the work — typically up to around 30 seconds — for promoting that edition of the festival;
  • use stills, screenshots, and the official poster or key art of the work;
  • use the title, logline and synopsis of the work; and
  • announce the selection and share any of the above on the festival's social media channels (including Instagram),

in each case solely to promote the relevant edition of Liverpool Indie Awards (for example, on our website, on our Instagram and other social media channels, in the festival programme, in trailers, or in press materials).

That's the whole of it. This licence exists to let us judge fairly and to celebrate the work we select — it is not a back door to anything else.

3. What we are NOT granted — in plain terms

We want to be unambiguous about the limits, because limits are what make a promise real. Submitting your work to Liverpool Indie Awards does NOT grant us, and we do NOT acquire, any of the following:

  • No ownership of your work or its copyright;
  • No distribution rights — we cannot release or distribute your film or script;
  • No broadcast rights — we cannot put it on TV, radio or any broadcast channel;
  • No streaming rights — we cannot place it on any streaming or video-on-demand service;
  • No right to sell the work or any part of it;
  • No sublicensing rights — we cannot pass any permission on to a third party (selling, licensing, or otherwise handing your work to someone else);
  • No perpetual rights — the limited licence above is tied to judging and to promoting the specific edition you entered, not forever;
  • No derivative-work rights — we cannot adapt, remake, re-edit (beyond the promotional excerpts described above), translate, or create any new work based on yours.

If a use isn't expressly listed in Section 2 as something you've permitted, then you haven't permitted it, and we won't do it. Anything beyond Section 2 would require a separate, written agreement that you freely choose to enter into — never something buried in a submission form.

4. Confidentiality of unreleased work and scripts

We understand that many of the works submitted — especially screenplays and films that haven't premiered — are confidential and commercially sensitive. We treat them that way.

  • Your work is handled only by our jury and authorised festival team, and only for judging (and, if your work is selected, screening).
  • You can send your film or script as either a view-only / streaming link (preferred — for example an unlisted Vimeo or YouTube link, or a Google Drive / Dropbox folder set to view-only) or, where that isn't practical, a downloadable link so our jury can open it. You always keep your master copy — we only ever access the copy you link us to.
  • We delete your work when it's no longer needed. If we download a copy in order to judge it, we keep it only for as long as we need it for the current edition, and we securely delete it once that season's judging and the live event are over (we may keep a copy a little longer only for a work that is officially selected and screened, or where the law requires us to). Payment and tax records are held separately, as explained in our Privacy Policy.
  • We do not publish, leak, post, sell, or share your unreleased work, and we do not disclose your script or unscreened film to outside parties as part of judging.

The one exception is the optional "Industry Network Pitch" program, which you choose at checkout. If you opt in, the project information you provide — such as the title, logline/synopsis, a still or poster, and any contact details or links you choose to include — is published in our Industry Network showcase on the Festival website and may be shared on our social channels (such as Instagram), so the industry professionals who follow and visit the Festival can discover it. Even then:

  • only the information you choose to provide for the showcase is published — you decide what goes in;
  • this grants us none of the rights ruled out in Section 3 above (no ownership, distribution, sale, sublicensing or derivative rights) beyond displaying the showcase details you provide for that purpose;
  • it remains an exposure-and-visibility opportunity only, with no transfer of ownership and no guaranteed outcome.

In short, your film or script itself is never published or shared outside our jury and festival team. The only thing made public is the showcase information you deliberately provide when you opt into the Industry Network Pitch.

5. Your warranty: you have the rights you're submitting

Because we're trusting you with a public screening and promotion, you confirm a few things to us when you submit. You warrant (formally promise) that:

  • you own the work, or you have obtained all the rights, licences, permissions, consents and clearances needed to submit it to a festival and to allow the screening and promotional uses described in Section 2;
  • this includes clearance for any music, footage, images, archive material, trademarks, and any likenesses, names, performances or appearances of real people in the work; and
  • the work does not infringe anyone else's copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, or other rights, and is not defamatory or otherwise unlawful.

This matters because if a third party's rights aren't cleared, it's the work's owner — not the festival — who is in the position to fix that. Clearing your rights up front protects you as much as it protects us.

6. Indemnity

In the (hopefully rare) event that someone brings a claim against us because the rights in your submitted work weren't properly owned or cleared, you agree to indemnify Liverpool Indie Awards (and THREE OH FIVE LTD, its team and jury) against the reasonable losses, damages, costs and expenses that arise directly from that breach of the warranty in Section 5.

In plain terms: we're happy to judge and showcase your work in good faith, on the understanding that you've genuinely sorted out the rights to it. If you have, this clause never comes into play.

7. Selection, removal and corrections

  • If your work is selected and you later want it removed from the public programme, contact us as early as possible and we'll do what we reasonably can; some printed or pre-scheduled materials may already be locked.
  • If we ever use a still, excerpt, title or logline and you spot something you'd like corrected or removed, email us and we'll look into it promptly.
  • The promotional licence in Section 2(b) relates to promoting the edition you entered; we don't treat it as a licence to keep marketing your work indefinitely.

8. About us and how to reach us

This festival trades as Liverpool Indie Awards and is operated by:

THREE OH FIVE LTD

G02, Eurocity, Gibraltar, GX11 1AA

Company Registration Number: 125450

Website: liverpoolindieawards.com

Email: info@liverpoolindieawards.com

If anything on this page is unclear, or you have a question about how your work will be handled, please email us before you submit — we're glad to answer.

This Rights & Intellectual Property page works alongside our Submission Rules & Eligibility, Refund & Withdrawal Policy, and Privacy Policy. Where it speaks specifically about ownership and the licence in your work, this page governs.