The Creative Commons licences, on which billions of digital works worldwide are based today (creativecommons.org), are a central instrument of open science, culture and education. In Germany, their use is expressly recommended by politicians, scientists and research funders, particularly in these areas. Despite their great importance, a comprehensive legal commentary for legal practice has been lacking until now - this gap is now being closed.

The new work analyses the current licence version 4.0 in detail and brings together central questions of interpretation, case law and literature for the first time. It is aimed not only at legal experts, but also at practitioners in science, education and culture. The handbook section provides practical answers to frequently asked questions, such as the interpretation of the "non-commercial" clause, the relationship between CCPL and German law on general terms and conditions, public domain or the relevance of licences in the context of generative AI.

"The commentary aims to be a source of inspiration for the opening up of legal science. It shows how legal knowledge can be made accessible in a collaborative, open and high-quality manner - in the spirit of an academic infrastructure that benefits everyone",
says co-editor Prof Dr Ellen Euler, Professor of Library Science - Open Access/Open Data at the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences, who has been working on open access, creative commons and open infrastructures in the legal context for many years.

OpenRewi e.V. as a driving force for open legal scholarship
The project is a publication project of OpenRewi e.V., a networkfor the promotionof openly licensedlegal scholarship, a network for the promotion of openly licenced legal materials. It was implemented in a decentralised, cooperative and transparent collaboration between 19 authors from the fields of law, the judiciary, the legal profession and politics - many of whom have been active since the early days of Creative Commons.
"It was a matter of course for us that this commentary would be openly accessible," emphasises Euler. "A work that deals with open licences in particular must not disappear behind paywalls."

High standards for open access publication
High demands were also placed on the digital and printed publication. The chosen publisher fulfils all the criteria for modern open access specialist publications - including accessibility, DOI allocation for the complete work and individual chapters, long-term archiving, metadata provision and distribution via international open access repositories. A particular concern was data protection friendliness: access and downloads are carried out without collecting personal data.

Open for collaboration and further development
The commentary is freely available digitally under licence and is also published as a book by Carl Grossmann. Further development together with the community on the Open Access Commentary (OAK) platform is planned for the second half of 2025 - including experimental environments for collaborative editing.

Boehm, Franziska; Euler, Ellen; Klimpel, Paul; Rack, Fabian; Weitzmann, John. Creative Commons Public Licence (CCPL) - Commentary and Handbook for Legal Practice. 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24921/2025.94115974