If your business owns the Copyright to work, you immediately possess the whole package of exclusive rights. It implies that only your business may copy, sell, or rent copies of the protected work, create derivative works, perform and exhibit the work in public, and engage in other similar activities. If others want to use or commercialize your copyright content, you may license or sell a portion, different portions, or all of your exclusive rights in return for compensation (s). Payments may be made at one time or regularly. It often results in much higher revenues for your company than the author, inventor, or copyright owner directly exploiting your Copyright. This article will go through some of the methods that may assist the owner of a copyrighted work to commercialize it and earn money.
Ways to commercialize your Creative works
The exclusive rights may be divided, subdivided, licensed, or sold in almost any manner you can think fit. As a result, area, time, market segment, language (translation), medium, and content may all be used to restrict the sale or licensing of these items. For example, a copyright owner may sell the publication rights to a book publisher, the film rights to the film business, the right to transmit the work to a radio station, and the right to dramatically adapt the work to a theatre society or television corporation.
There are many ways to commercialize creative works:
Reproduce or sell the work by yourself:
You may merely sell copyrighted works or create copies and sell the copies; in either instance, you retain all or most of the rights resulting from copyright ownership;
Licensing to others:
You may allow others to copy or otherwise use the works. It may be accomplished by licensing your economic rights to the works; and
Sell or Transfer to others:
You can sell (transfer) your Copyright to the works in whole or in part.
Commercialize your Copyrighted work through License
A license is a permit given to others (individuals or businesses) to exercise one or more of your economic rights connected with a copyright-protected work. The benefit of licensing is that you retain Ownership of the Copyright while enabling others to reproduce, distribute, download, broadcast, webcast, simulcast, or podcast your work in return for money.
Licensing agreements may be customized to meet the parties’ unique needs. As a result, you may license some rights but not others. For instance, you may keep the rights to produce derivative works from a computer game (e.g., a movie) while licensing the right to copy and use it.
Types of License
There are two types of licenses:
- Exclusive License and
- Non-exclusive License.
Exclusive License:
An Exclusive License precludes any other person or business from using the applicable intellectual property rights. When you give an exclusive license, the licensee has the only right to use the work in the manner specified in the license. Notably, the licensor is usually excluded from exploiting intellectual property rights.
Characteristics of Exclusive License
- An exclusive license must be in writing to be valid and effective.
- An exclusive license may also be restricted, for example, to a specified territory, for a limited period, for limited purposes, or the continuation of the exclusivity may be conditional upon other types of performance requirements.
- Exclusive licenses are often a good business strategy for getting a copyright product distributed and sold on the market if you lack the resources to market your work yourself effectively.
A Non-Exclusive License:
It gives the licensee the right to exploit the intellectual property. Still, the licensor retains the right to use the same intellectual property and to enable an unlimited number of other licensees to do so as well. When you issue a nonexclusive license to a business, you allow that business to exercise one or more of your exclusive rights, but this does not preclude you from allowing others (including yourself) to use the same rights concurrently.
As a result, you may grant the right to use, duplicate, and distribute your work to an unlimited number of people or businesses. Non -exclusive licenses, like exclusive licenses, may be limited and restricted in a variety of ways.
Sell your Creative work and earn money: Assignment of Copyright
An alternative to licensing is to sell your work’s Copyright to another party, who subsequently becomes the new owner. The formal name for this kind of ownership transfer is “assignment.” ” Unlike a license, which merely provides the right to perform something that would be illegal without the permission, an assignment conveys the whole interest in your right (s).
You may transfer the whole bundle of rights or just a portion of them. An assignment is only legal if it is in writing and signed by the copyright owner. Additionally, keep in mind that only economic rights may be transferred; moral rights remain with the author.
Does selling of Copyright merely means the transfer of Ownership?
Copyright is different from possession of the physical item on which the work is fixed. Simply selling a copyrighted work (e.g., a computer programmer or a manuscript) does not transfer Copyright immediately to the buyer. Generally, the author retains Ownership of work unless he explicitly transfers it to the buyer of the work in a written agreement.
You may nevertheless lose part of your exclusive rights out of the copyright bundle if you sell a copy of a work or the original (e.g. a painting). For instance, the buyer of the copy may have the right to further dispose of it, such as by selling or transferring it. It is essential to verify the relevant laws of Copyright in your own country and the export market before selling copies of a work.
The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the subject. If you’re interested in licensing or assigning your intellectual property rights, contact copyrights experts like HHS Lawyers and Legal Consultants have extensive experience writing license and assignment agreements for transferring Intellectual Property Rights to other parties.
