Does your business know its rights? As global corporations increasingly take advantage of their digital assets, this is an incredibly important question. More and more, the world’s media and entertainment companies are extending their content—often making it available to millions of potential consumers via the Internet—and the first question they must ask themselves is: ‘Have we secured all the rights we need to do this?’ Despite the proliferation of technologies that allow ‘digital asset management’ (DAM) and ‘digital rights management’ (DRM), a third—and equally important area—known as ‘business rights management’ or BRM, is often overlooked. Yet, its impact on the corporation’s ability to make the most of its digital content cannot be underestimated. While media and entertainment companies may have the most to lose—or gain—the question of business rights applies to ALL corporations that possess or utilize ANY form of intellectual property, including patents, contracts, engineering schematics and design documents. While DAM and DRM deal with the technological ability to track—and manage—usage of digital assets, BRM deals with the more fundamental issue of whether the corporation can reuse, repurpose or otherwise distribute the content in the first place. In other words, DAM focuses on facilitating storage and easy access to digital content assets, and DRM focuses on specifying and tracking the digital content use by end consumers. Finally, BRM helps corporations track their contractual rights and obligations to content creators to govern how the digital content can be reused and distributed across time and media. In an era of globalization, BRM is especially important because contractual rights are the ‘crown jewels’ of today’s media companies and essential to the enterprises that license content from them. Yet, as smaller companies become part of global media corporations, tracking the contractual rights becomes increasingly difficult. When corporate downsizing or consolidation affects the contract department—and people change jobs or move on—the ‘institutional knowledge’ about a particular contract often leaves with them. Hence, the crown jewels may be lost—or at least, partially obscured. Polishing and re-using the jewels of digital content is what today’s media and entertainment companies are all about. Digital content also forms the essential building blocks for all corporations, as they use licensed pieces of content to create their own, derivative content—from the sales teams’ product brochures and employees’ training manuals, to investors’ financial reports and vendors’ information. But in a technology-based world where the winning formula for business is ‘speed + knowledge = opportunity,’ it becomes essential for the entire organization to be able to instantly understand just what it can and cannot do with its digital content. Will a global organization be able to make an immediate decision if an instant multi-million dollar opportunity pops up in Hong Kong? Can it use a cartoon character created by a freelance artist in another country on its own global web site? A comprehensive BRM program would help companies make these quick decisions. In addition to speed, a BRM system could provide the entire enterprise with instant access to the digital assets they have already acquired – cutting waste, eliminating duplicate steps, and leveraging assets across media and distribution channels. BRM: Managing Corporate and Contractual Rights on a Global Scale The ‘superset’ that encompasses all digital rights, a business rights management system integrates with DAM and DRM to create a seamless digital content application environment. A BRM system consists of four main functions: - Rights Catalog – This is the master list of rights, which are tied to specific assets. This could be a piece of digital content in a digital asset management system, but might also be a physical asset or other type of intangible asset.
- Rights Acquisition System – This is the mechanism by which rights are added to the system. One way to implement this is through a contracts system. Many rights are, in fact, acquired through a contract process. A BRM-aware contracts system can automate much of the contract creation process and capture the rights and payment terms associated with the acquired content, storing the data in the rights catalog in a structured manner.
- Sub-Licensing System – This is the flip side of rights acquisition. It allows an organization to track on a contract or sales order basis which rights it has sold to other parties. Again, this has automation benefits—such as validating whether or not particular rights are available for sale, or they have already been licensed to others on an exclusive basis. Additionally, it allows an enterprise to create reports that ensure it is fully monetizing the rights that it owns.
- Enterprise Integration – This includes the process of integrating with a DAM or DRM system, but also integrating with other corporate systems such as royalties for payments to content owners/creators, and billing for collecting sublicensing revenues. There are a number of emerging vendors in the BRM space, none of which currently supports the full spectrum of BRM functionality. But these products are evolving rapidly. Key vendors include Oracle, Jaguar, Rightsline, uSoft. and Savantech.
Typically, a BRM system should integrate a comprehensive platform for entering artist contracts and agreements; identifying specific rights and obligations; and tracking rights as they are sold to other companies around the world. Built on standard database technology, the system must allow easy access, generally via the Internet, by employees, attorneys and perhaps even artist management to view royalty statements and other information regarding their creative works and how they are being monetized. Interestingly, there may be some circumstances when digital content may not be sent via the Internet, as in the case of still or video photography of Olympic events. Under agreement with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), broadcasters are barred from distributing Olympic footage via the Internet. The IOC has reserved that right for itself. It hasn’t always been called “business rights management,” but the concept of managing and tracking contractual rights has existed long before intellectual and creative property became digital. In its simplest form, BRM is the ability for a company to easily capture, comprehend and manage the universe or ‘superset’ of rights they own. In the days gone by, that job might have fallen to paralegals in the ‘contract department.’ But in today’s fast-moving, global economy, the ability to know, track and manage business rights is quickly being supplemented and transformed by technology—giving smart enterprises the opportunity to make the most of their content assets. About the Authors: Debbie Polishook, Aaron M. Renn and Francesco Giannetta are members of Accenture’s Media & Entertainment industry group and the Accenture Digital Content Services group. Talk to someone about this topic  To Top
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