Findings – Licence agreements with publishers or intermediaries such as Rights Reproduction Organizations are now in place to allow delivery of electronic documents on a wide scale. Within this complicated framework of licence agreements, digital rights management (DRM) systems are a challenge for customers and the delivery service. However, it can be noted, that a simple watermark suffices nearly all publishers in agreements covering pay-per-view delivery of generic digital article files, and only 25 per cent require strict DRM for document delivery scanned from the print. At the same time, TIB looks for more customer-friendly DRM systems. Also, TIB is looking for ways to cooperate with partners to raise efficiency gains and to offer a more convenient service to its customers. Finally, TIB experiences that inadequate copyright law still poses a major hindrance for the international exchange of scientific information being part of its collection.Originality/value – The article describes the development of document supply services of the major TIB publications. It also shows the barriers which inadequate copyright law poses to the exchange of scientific information.Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to give an overview about the framework of copyright law and licences as well as the development of German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB) full-text supply services within that framework. The change of German copyright law in 2008 posed a challenge to TIB’s full-text supply services. While TIB can deliver on the basis of a statutory limitation any document to customers within Germany via mail and fax, there are restrictions for electronic delivery.Design/methodology/approach – The article describes the framework of German copyright law and licences for document delivery as well as activities of TIB to continue servicing customers in a best possible way within the existing framework. © Brammer and Olf, 2014.