5 Tips for Licensing and Rights Management

Identify and define what makes your intellectual property special.

Introduction to Licensing and Rights Management at Stimler Advantage

As part of its services, Stimler Advantage supports organizations in navigating the complex world of licensing and rights management to protect their assets, intellectual property (IP), and generate new revenue streams. Licensing and Rights Management work is informed by the Stimler Advantage 5 S’s Framework. 

Organizations can struggle to unlock the full potential of their IP with licensing and rights management. IP can include many facets of an organization's assets, such as its brand, media content, data, and products and services. However, these resources and valuable assets can be quickly discarded, forgotten, lost, or underutilized, leaving an organization at a disadvantage to the competition and missing out on vital revenue streams that support its mission, operations, and well-being.

Note: Always involve and work with licensed legal professionals across intellectual property areas and jurisdictions when undertaking licensing and rights management activities along with other consultants and subject matter experts (SMEs).

5 Tips for Licensing and Rights Management

1. Unique Value Proposition: Identify and define what makes your IP special. Determine the use cases for a customer to want to engage or pay to use your assets over the fast amounts of other available content. Provide the customer with a clear description and visualization of the benefits and strengths of your organization's IP. Articulate in clear and compelling language the unique value proposition of your IP to attract interest and convert that interest into licensing opportunities.
2. Quality in Context: Deliver intellectual property that meets and exceeds licensee expectations. Focus on IP accuracy, brand consistency, desired and industry-standard formats, interoperability, preservation, relevant subject matter, and technical functionality. Situate the price of your IP to the marketplace to maximize earned revenue and use potential. Develop and robustly maintain rigorous quality control analytics and review workflows to protect your IP’s integrity and value. Regularly assess, update, and retire your IP to ensure it remains relevant. Importantly, do your best not to be overly distracted by short-term trends and create long-lasting IP from the outset that will continue to attract customers, perform, and serve your organization well over time. If you make a tactical investment in IP production, ensure it is integrated into your overall organizational strategy and requirements for lasting value.  
3. Robust Content Management: Organize your IP for easy access and utilization by internal and external stakeholders within a digital-first and structured database system environment. Create clear and detailed business rules, FAQs, knowledge bases, policies, and procedures to guide your users through self-service. Make sure the technical support, combined with automated and human solutions, provides authentic, sincere, and, most importantly, helpful support in helping users find and use the content they need when needed. Implement version control system to track changes. Monitor usage and performance of IP assets within the system and downstream through your organization's products and services and partner distributions. The system's health, management, and value should tie back into your organization's objectives and key results (OKRs) and key performance indicators (KPIs) on the strategic plan. Efficient IP management empowers an organization with operational productivity and excellence to seize opportunities to support an organization's sustainability.
4. Friendly Facilitating Agreements: Develop clear, concise, fair, and mutually beneficial licensing agreements to attract customers who will honor your organization's agreements and treat you and your assets appropriately and respectfully. Well-defined agreements further minimize conflicts and ensure smooth transactions. Include explicit terms about the terms of use, royalty structure, duration, media, format, reuse, and termination clauses, among other considerations. Use precise language and avoid jargon when possible for better understanding by all parties. Create a workflow where agreements are not a barrier to a potential engagement or use of your organization's IP by working with capable, expert, and effective legal counsel and, as appropriate, robust digital tools to process legal transitions with a combination of automation and human review. Care for and consider your customer’s expectations going through legal matters is essential to customer service. 
5. Targeted Distribution: Your IP will not scale to its full potential if utilization is limited to your channels and platforms alone. Identify and build relationships with the relevant partners to reach your target audience. Consider brand collaborations, online marketplaces, industry events, or direct negotiations. Tailor your approach to each partner to resonate with potential licensees while maintaining the identity and integrity of your brand and IP. Pilot IP campaigns can build confidence relationships and test viable engagement and markets with partners. Require partners to track your collaborative results as part of agreements to track necessary performance analytics and adjust your distribution strategy as needed. Strategic distribution maximizes your reach and increases potential licensing success. Building partnerships takes effort, money, skilled personnel, and time, so make partnerships a permanent and operational aspect of your organization's IP strategy. Partnerships cannot be done well as ad-hoc or thrown together in the last hours of your campaign or negotiations; plan from the start and invest the necessary resources.

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​Here are some further considerations for Licensing and Rights Management:

• Risk Management: Consider unauthorized use and develop contingency plans for copyright infringement and disputes. Implement robust digital rights management (DRM) systems, track usage patterns, and establish clear terms of use. Adapt your IP strategies as the licensing landscape evolves. 
• Preservation:  Utilize industry standards, and, as much as possible interoperable formats, that are future-ready and compatible with evolving technologies. Create and manage detailed metadata to help locate and manage your IP assets effectively over time. Ensure your IP is protected from loss due to technical failure or natural disasters. Plan to migrate your IP to newer formats as technology necessitates. 
• Security and Verification: Restrict access to your IP based on user roles and permissions. Verify the identity and legitimacy of potential licensees before entering agreements. Track and analyze access to monitor and identify suspicious activity. Encrypt sensitive IP assets to protect them from unauthorized access. Prepare for cybersecurity threats. 
• Sociocultural Considerations: Support accessibility in your IP assets. Be aware of intellectual property laws and regulations in different jurisdictions. Situate your IP in cultural contexts to be aware and prepared to navigate cultural differences. Consider localizing your IP for different scenarios.

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