IP Rights & Royalties Glossary

A free resource to help educate, both you and your organization, on some of most common and critical IP rights & royalties concepts.​

Browse the Glossary

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z

Glossary FAQ

The IP (Intellectual Property) Rights & Royalties glossary is a publicly available resource that allows anyone to learn about key concepts that lawyers, paralegals, business development and IT professionals deal with when protecting and monetizing their intellectual property rights.  

The glossary was created by a consortium of KlarisIP rights & royalties consultants. Main contributors include: Graham Allan, Ross French, Brian Boisvert, Diana Browne and Brian Cross.

Yes! Our goal is to have this be a publicly available resource that everyone can learn from from. Therefore any areas you believe can be improved upon will help community. To contribute or suggest edits, please go to the edit form here.

A

Amendment

Any changes made to the terms of an existing contract. These changes can include revisions or renewals that impact the IP rights.

See Also: Renewals

Amortization

The write down and recoupment of costs associated with the IP over a period time.

Avails

The process of combining rights-in and rights-out information to determine what IP assets are currently available to exploit (i.e. use/sell/monetize) within a window of opportunity. This is usually done by an automated system, known as an “avails engine”.

See Also: Licensing-Out, Windowing

B

Business Affairs

Both a team, and a functional operation of an organization, that is responsible for securing rights to exploit their IP assets. This area of an organization also works with a sales team to find licensing opportunities to monetize individual IP assets.

See Also: Licensing-Out, Windowing

C

Channel Term

The distribution or delivery channel that the IP rights can be licensed too. This is specific to content assets.

Contract Approvals

The process of getting sign-off from business and legal stakeholders around the terms and language of the contract.

Contract Authoring

The process of drafting and revising a legal contract agreement between parties.

Contract Entry

The process of entering the specific legal and rights-related data points of your IP contracts into a contract management, rights management, ERP or CRM (i.e. deal management) system.

Contract Lookups

Reviewing the underlying legal agreements associated with your IP.

Contract Tracking & Workflow

The process of managing & tracking a contract through its lifecycle, from draft to execution.

D

Dashboard

An area within your rights management, contract management, ERP, CRM or even a standalone business intelligence system where you can see aggregations of data and rich visualizations (bar charts, tables, graphs, etc.) of said data.

See Also: Business Intelligence

Deal Management

The process of securing business deal points for an IP contract. 

Deal Memo

A short summary of the business deal points between parties. 

Drafting (An Agreement)

The contract lifecycle stage where the legal agreement between parties is being written and edited by lawyers/legal counsels.

See Also: Contract Lifecycle Management

Duration Term

The time frame in which an IP asset can be licensed.

E

Executed (An Agreement)

The contract lifecycle stage where both parties (i.e. contract) formally sign the IP agreement.

See Also: Contract Lifecycle Management

F

Financial Reporting

The process of aggregating and summarizing financial information associated with IP payments (royalties-out, participations) and monetization (royalties-in)

See Also: Royalties-In, Royalties-Out, Participations

G

General Ledger

The main financial ledger where the transactions of a company’s finances are maintained. The general ledger contains a roll-up to the corporate chart of accounts and is often connected to a sub-ledger specific to IP transactions, such as royalties-in, royalties-out and participations.

See Also: Sub-Ledger

H
I

IP Catalog

The IP asset portfolio of an organization. This is generally managed as a structured inventory, where robust metadata around the IP asset is tracked and managed.

Also Known As: Title Management

J
K

KPIs

The ‘key performance indicators’ that an organization assesses the success of their IP portfolio. These KPIs are often tracked and show in a business intelligence dashboard within your rights management, contract management or BI tool.

See Also: Business Intelligence

L

Language Term

The language(s) that the IP asset can be translated or dubbed in.  This can include dialects. This term is largely specific to IP content assets.

Licensee

The individual or organization who is acquiring the rights to  an IP asset.

See Also: Licensing-In

Licensor

The individual or organization who is selling the rights to  an IP asset.

See Also: Licensing-Out

M

Master Data Management

The process of consistently defining and managing your rights data points, such as territory, language, term, etc. This will occur across all key IP systems, such as your contract management, rights management and content/digital asset management platforms.
N
O
P

Payment Management

The process of tracking incoming and outgoing funds against IP.

See Also: Invoice Management, Royalties-In, Royalties-Out Participations

Q
R

Rights Information Management

The process of organizing and maintaining the data of your IP, specifically around the IP’s permissions, prohibitions, & obligations.

Rights Lookups/Requests

The process of searching for and retrieving rights information.

Rights Tree

A hierarchal (i.e. broad-narrow) representation of IP rights information. This helps express complex nested rights terms, such as territory, channel, language, etc. 

For example, here is a rights tree for territory: North America > United States > New York. 

See Also: Territory, Language, Channel

Royalties-In

The tracking of royalty revenue others owe you for their use of your IP.

See Also: Royalties-Out

Royalties-Out

The tracking of royalty payments you owe to others for your use of their IP, and payments for partners who share rights with an IP in which you have an ownership stake

See Also: Royalties-In

S

Sales

Both a team, and a functional operation of an organization, that is responsible for monetizing rights of their IP assets to third party licensees. This group works with Business Affairs to find licensing opportunities within avail windows. 

See Also: Avails, Business-Affairs, Licensing-Out, Windowing

Smart Contracts

A contract that is constructed as machine readable data within a secure and trackable software technology ecosystem. This type of contract provides all parties a secure encrypted way to negotiate and execute the agreement. Many smart contracts are facilitated by blockchain technologies.

 See Also: Contract Management

T

Territory Term

The geographic location that the IP asset can be used in.  This can be as broad as continent or as narrow as a city or state. When shown as data, these terms can be structured in a tree hierarchy. For example: North America > United States > New York

U

Unique Identifier (UID)

A unique data point identifier that is associated to an IP asset. This helps ensure that an IP asset is cataloged as a single IP object.

See Also: IP Catalog 

V
W

Windowing

The process of making available IP for durations of time (i.e ‘windowing’). In these windows, third party licensees can acquire specific rights (distribution, territory, language, term, etc.) to use the IP asset. An example would be: theatrical rights from May to July within Germany

X
Y
Z

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