Commercial licensing & rights clearance

Commercial Licensing and Rights Clearance

Funding cuts, the energy crisis and the global pandemic have increased the need for organisations to review their management and use of Intellectual Property (IP) assets to commercialise and make the most of their collections, content and related IP.

We offer a collaborative, holistic, creative and pragmatic approach to help you identify, manage, protect and commercialise existing and new IP to strengthen your organisation’s resilience. We can provide support in generating income from items in your collections and organisational assets, through activities such as image licensing, brand licensing and product development.

Saving money can be achieved by greater efficiency in rights clearance to enable the use of third party content.

Rights clearance support

We offer a comprehensive rights clearance service for organisations for items including text, archival content, images, audio and film footage. We offer on-demand advice for all rights queries and have unrivalled experience, knowledge and research resources to resolve the most complex rights projects. The service includes:

Guidance documentation for risk management and rights clearance strategy (copyright status, due diligence, orphan works and appetite for risk)
Rights clearance procedures
Rights identification and research
Tracing and negotiating licences
Tracing rights holders and reasonable searches
Orphan works analysis and advice
Checking privileged sources of information
Risk assessments where clearances have not been sought
Drafting template letters and forms

iSAW Company on Unsplash

Commercial licensing

We can develop a commercial licensing strategy for you and highlight potential areas for commercial development. We would provide the steps you need to put in place to get there, indicate possible partners, the potential registration of IP and then work with you to bring this all to fruition.

Our service will help you to recognise and activate the value of your IP, as part of your broader commercial strategy. This could include the identification of new revenue opportunities, new products and partnerships, market assessments (local, regional, national and global) as well as raising brand awareness.

Our services include:

Advice about the strategic use of of your IP assets, familiarising ourselves with the collections you hold, and auditing their commercial potential.
Collaborate with you and your teams to analyse potential licensing opportunities .
Research and identify potential partners, consistent with your organisation's brand values and positioning.
Conduct an assessment of the licensing market (global) and competitors.
Support you to develop a 5 year business case, with quantifiable targets and KPIs.
Support you to gain organisational buy-in for new business from key internal stakeholders.
Assist you in costing the resources required to deliver your business plan.
Review how you might resource the delivering your business plan, for example, outsourcing.
Advise on general IP and licensing issues, including trade marking and contracting partners.

Rights clearance service

Emilia Frost