Royalty-Free, or RF, refers to the right to use copyrighted material or intellectual property without the need to pay royalties for each use or per volume sold, or some time period of use or sales.
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Many computer industry standards, especially those developed and submitted by industry consortiums or individual companies, involve royalties for the actual use of these standards. These royalties are typically charged on a "per port" basis, where the manufacturer of end-user devices has to pay a small fixed fee for each device sold. With millions of devices sold each year, the royalties can amount to several millions of dollars, which is a significant burden for the manufacturer. Examples of such royalties-based standards include FireWire, HDMI, and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC.
Royalty-free standards do not include any "per-port" or "per-volume" charges or annual payments for the use of the standard, even though the text of the actual specification is typically protected by copyright and needs to be purchased from the standards body.
Most open standards are royalty-free, and many proprietary standards are royalty-free as well.
In photography and the illustration industry, refers to a copyright license where the user has the one-time right to use the photo without very many restrictions. Licenses vary by each site so its important to read the License Agreement prior to licensing. The user can therefore use the image in several projects without having to purchase any additional licenses. RF licenses can not be given on an exclusive basis. In stock photography RF is one of the four common licenses or business models together with Rights Managed, subscription and micro.[1]