Introduction
1 - Identify your IPR’s
2 - Protect your IPR’s
3 - Use and exploitation
4 - Enforcement of your IPR’s

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STEP 3. USE AND EXPLOITATION OF YOUR IPR’s

Industry has realised how important an asset IPR’s are to a business, although we are still some way off maximising the money to be made from them. It is clear that in the music industry the power of copyright in the literary and musical works but companies in other sectors should also seriously consider what IPR’s they have ownership of (just consider the content that you may have included on your website). Assessing the IPR assets you have may help increase the value of your business when it comes to its sale. However, it just may be that the IPR’s you own can be passed to other individuals who may in turn provide you with a financial remuneration for the privilege.

Why would you want to pass your IPR’s to someone else? You may be the inventor of the latest vacuum cleaner and acquired the patents you need to protect it. It is quite unlikely that you have the money to mass produce the machine, let alone distribute it internationally and provide a successful marketing campaign. So, for a bag of money and hopefully a healthy royalty rate you may assign the patent rights to a manufacturer. A distributor in this country or abroad may be given a license to distribute.

We mentioned in the last paragraph the words assign and license – but what do they mean to us as the copyright owner? Both indicate that we are transferring in some way to a third party our rights but are quite different forms of transfer.

An assignment means that we are passing all rights and ownership in our intellectual property to a third party so that they now have become the owners of the IPR. Therefore there may now exist a separate author and owner of the IPR. The new owner can now do what it likes with the IPR. The assignment is pretty serious stuff and shouldn’t be given lightly. The law has recognised this and therefore an assignment needs to be in writing and signed by the assignor (in our example, the inventor of the vacuum cleaner). So it should be quite difficult for you to accidentally license your IPR’s away.

A license means you are granting someone a right to do something that may be unlawful to do without the license. A license can generally be divided into two kinds – an exclusive license (its for you only) or a non-exclusive license (you and whoever else). A licence can give you more freedom than an assignment in that you can decide what person is getting what permission do what with the IPR. Everton FC as an example will be the owners of their logo (which is a trade mark and an artistic work for the purposes of copyright). They will provide a non-exclusive licence to several scarf manufacturers to use their logo but the kit manufacturer will get an exclusive license so no-one else is allowed to make similar kits. Sky Sports will be granted a non-exclusive license to include the logo on its broadcasts but so will the BBC and ITV. Football sticker magazines will get another licence to include the logo. So you can see that a great deal of different licenses may be provided and exist at the same time relating to the same IPR. This freedom would not be possible if Everton had assigned their logo to a third party because it would then be that third party who would be able to decide which licenses to grant.

So why do people assign their work? There may be more money, or certainly money at an early stage. It may be that the creator of the IPR is quite happy to let someone else now take ownership and develop the product’s potential further. It is always worth considering however the value in providing different licenses to different third parties for several fees.


                  

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