Can a Competitor Legally Reuse Your Influencer's Content in Their Own Ads?

What happens when a competitor reuses your influencer's content?

It happens more often than brands expect: a video or photo you paid an influencer or UGC creator to make for your brand turns up in a competitor's own ad — with nobody ever having asked either you or the creator for permission. The short answer is no, that's not lawful as a starting point. But who can actually do something about it, and how strong a claim your own brand has, depends entirely on what your usage-rights agreement with the creator actually granted you — not on the fact that you were the one who paid for the shoot.

That's a different situation from the one non-exclusive, sole and exclusive UGC licenses covers. That article is about the creator themselves lawfully selling the same clip to a competitor — a license, just with a different customer. This article covers something else: a competitor taking the content with no agreement with anyone at all, neither you nor the creator.

Two separate rights are in play — and they don't automatically belong to you

When a competitor reuses your influencer's content without permission, there are really two separate legal questions in play, and they're answered differently:

• Copyright in the footage itself — the right to copy, publish and use the file. That sits with the creator by default, not with you, regardless of the fact that you paid for the production.
• The creator's own right to their image — the right to decide for themselves whether their face and identity may be used in an advertisement. That belongs to the creator personally, independent of who owns the copyright or holds a usage-rights agreement.

The point that surprises most brands: your own brand's position against the competitor depends almost entirely on the first question — what your contract with the creator actually assigned to you. The creator's own position doesn't depend on your contract at all, because the competitor was never a party to it.

Who actually owns the copyright — you or the creator?

Under § 1(1) of the Danish Consolidated Act on Copyright (ophavsretsloven, LBK no. 1093 of 20 August 2023): "the person who creates a literary or artistic work holds copyright to it." In a UGC or influencer production, it's the creator who makes the work — films, edits and finishes it — not the brand paying for it. As UGC usage rights explained establishes, that ownership doesn't transfer automatically because the brand paid for the work — only as far as the agreement expressly says it does.

In practice, that means: unless your contract with the creator expressly assigns the copyright to you (or grants you an explicit right to pursue infringement yourself), the creator remains the rightful holder of the right a competitor has infringed by reusing the footage — not you, even though it's commercially your brand that the competitor is actually damaging.

What an ordinary usage-rights agreement actually gives you — and what it doesn't

§ 53(3) of ophavsretsloven sets out what Danish copyright doctrine calls the specialty principle (specialitetsgrundsætningen): where the author has transferred a right to exploit the work in a specific way or by specific means, that transfer does not give the recipient the right to exploit the work in other ways or by other means. Applied to a UGC deal: a usage right to post organically and run paid ads is not the same thing as owning the work, or having the right to sue a third party over it yourself. Those are two different things, and one doesn't automatically follow from the other.

That lines up with the general licensing-law default: an ordinary licensee — a party who has been given permission to use a work, without the copyright itself being assigned to them or an explicit right to pursue infringement — generally lacks independent standing to bring a copyright-infringement claim in their own name. Danish courts have taken that point seriously: in February 2021, Retten i Lyngby (the Lyngby District Court) dismissed a case brought by a licensee who neither exploited the right the license actually granted, nor was an authorized collective-management organization — precisely because the licensee lacked the necessary standing. That case involved an entirely different context (unlawful file-sharing of a film), but the principle it illustrates is the same: the right to bring an infringement claim yourself follows the actual underlying right, not merely a permission to use.

Which license type actually gives you standing to act against a competitor?

The practical consequence: if your brand wants the ability to act directly against a competitor stealing content, the answer isn't automatically "buy the most expensive license type" — it's making sure the agreement explicitly names either an assignment of copyright in the finished asset, or an explicit right for you to pursue a third party's unauthorized use yourself. Most standard agreements, in practice, do neither.

The creator's own, independent right: the right to their own image

Whatever the copyright question above resolves to, the creator has a completely separate, and typically stronger, short-term route: the right to their own image. That right has developed through Danish case law — notably the Danish Supreme Court's ruling in the so-called Buster Larsen case (U 1965.126 H), where a company was found liable for using a well-known actor's picture in an advertisement without his consent, even though the company lawfully owned the photograph itself. The problem was the commercial use of his face without permission — not a copyright question at all. See portrait rights and bystanders in influencer and UGC content for the full breakdown of the principle.

Today the right is backed by § 3(1) of markedsføringsloven (the Danish Marketing Practices Act) on good marketing practice. Forbrugerombudsmanden (the Danish Consumer Ombudsman) has taken the position in its own practice (case 1998-989/5-296, Juridisk Årbog 1998, pp. 48-49) that using a portrait image of a person in marketing without the depicted person's prior permission is, as a rule, contrary to good marketing practice.

Applied to this situation: when a competitor runs your influencer's face in its own advertisement, the creator themselves — regardless of whether your brand can act via copyright or not — has an independent claim against the competitor. That right never required your consent to exist, and it can't be removed by your own usage-rights agreement either, because the competitor was never a party to that agreement. In practice, that means: even in the situation where your brand holds only ordinary, non-assigned usage rights and can't itself bring a copyright claim, the creator typically still has a real tool to act on.

Decision framework: what should you do?

• IF your contract explicitly assigns the copyright, or an explicit right to pursue infringement yourself → you can report and pursue the case directly with the platform or the competitor.
• IF your contract only grants ordinary usage rights (by far the most common case) → contact the creator first. As a rule, they hold the right the competitor has infringed, and they also have their own, independent right to their own image to act on.
• IF the creator doesn't respond, or isn't reachable → your brand can still document the case and formally ask the creator in writing to file a report, or agree going forward that future contracts grant you an explicit right to act yourself.
• IF the case is serious (significant ad spend, clear bad faith from the competitor) → consider a coordinated step between brand and creator, potentially with legal advice — but the platform's own reporting route is almost always faster and cheaper to try first.

The fastest practical route: the platform's own copyright reporting

Whatever the legal questions above ultimately resolve to, the fastest real route to getting the content removed is almost always the platform's own reporting mechanism, not the courts. Meta, YouTube and TikTok each run their own reporting flow specifically for copyright infringement — distinct from the trademark-reporting tools described in unauthorized use of a brand's trademark by a creator. Whoever files the report typically has to be able to document that they're the rightful holder of the infringed right (or hold authorization from them) — one more reason it's often fastest for the creator to file it themselves, when it's the creator who actually holds the copyright.

Note: we haven't independently verified the three platforms' specific handling times for this article — use their own, current help pages to find the correct reporting form.

Hypothetical worked example

The figures and sequence below are invented for illustration only — not a real Make Influence customer case.

A Danish skincare brand pays a creator DKK 6,000 for a UGC video with ordinary, non-exclusive usage rights for organic and paid social — the contract says nothing about assigning copyright. Two months later, the brand discovers a direct competitor running the identical video, downloaded from the brand's own Instagram ad, as its own paid advert on a hypothetical media budget of DKK 25,000 over six weeks.

The brand wants to report the infringement itself, but on reviewing the agreement realizes it only holds usage rights — not the copyright. The brand contacts the creator the same day; the creator files a copyright report with the platform, documenting that the video is their own work, and the video is removed within a few days. Had the brand's original contract instead included an add-on granting it the right to pursue a third party's unauthorized use itself — often a small addition to the base fee, illustratively set at DKK 500 in this example — the brand could have filed the report itself, the same day, without waiting on the creator's availability.

Common mistakes

• Assuming that paying for the content gives you ownership of it. A usage right doesn't do that — only an explicit assignment does.
• Thinking a more expensive license type automatically gives you standing to sue a third party. An exclusive license stops others from lawfully getting the clip from the creator — it doesn't by itself give you standing against someone who steals it without going through the creator at all.
• Forgetting the creator's own, independent right to their image. That right exists and works even in cases where your own copyright claim is weak.
• Waiting to document the case. Dated screenshots, URLs and ad-library records (Meta's Ad Library, for instance) lose value the longer you wait.
• Going straight to a lawyer before trying the platform's own reporting route. That route is usually both faster and cheaper, and doesn't require the legal question of who actually holds the right to be settled first.

Make Influence's operational perspective

In our experience, it's by far the most common pattern that a brand discovers the problem before anyone has worked out who actually has standing to act on it — because the original UGC or influencer agreement never addressed anything beyond channels, duration and price. Our recommendation is to settle it before it becomes necessary: a short line in the contract on who has the right to pursue a third party's unauthorized use saves real time on the day it actually happens. See what to put in an influencer contract for the full clause list worth having from the start.

FAQ

Can our brand sue a competitor for using our influencer's content?

Only if your agreement with the creator explicitly assigns the copyright to you, or grants you an explicit right to pursue a third party's infringement yourself. Ordinary usage rights — even paid ones — generally don't give you that right on their own.

What if the creator won't help report it?

Then your brand's own options are typically limited to whatever your contract specifically grants you. That's a good reason to agree how to handle this situation before it arises, rather than after.

Is this the same as a creator selling the same clip to a competitor themselves?

No. That's a lawful licensing situation, covered in non-exclusive, sole and exclusive UGC licenses. This article covers the opposite case: a competitor taking the content with no agreement with either party at all.

Does the right to one's own image apply even if the creator gave us broad rights to the content?

Yes. The right to one's own image belongs to the creator personally and can't be transferred to you through your usage-rights agreement — and it doesn't disappear because you hold broad rights either. It's relevant here because it's the competitor using the creator's face without consent, not you.

How is this different from a creator unauthorizedly using our own brand's logo?

That's the mirror-image case. See unauthorized use of a brand's trademark by a creator for the situation where it's a creator using your trademark without an agreement.

Should we add a clause about this to future contracts?

Yes. A short clause that either assigns copyright in the finished asset to you, or grants you an explicit right to pursue a third party's unauthorized use yourself, removes the uncertainty this article describes. See what to put in an influencer contract.