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Bryan Joiner Editor in Chief
bjoiner@licensingbook.com
New licensing deals are in the works for DeLorean Motor Company. Mattel has released DeLorean Hot Wheels in black and gold, and Urban Outfitters will be selling Trademarked DeLorean T-shirts in select stores and on www80stees.com. Nike will be producing a DeLorean sneaker, scheduled to debut this fall.
In a license agreement, the licensor often requires the licensee to maintain various insurance policies and, for some of those policies, add the licensor’s name to the policy for the term of the agreement plus a post-expiration period.
Before entering a license agreement, a licensee should confirm with its insurance provider that the licensee: a) has in place (or can secure in a timely fashion) coverage for the licensor-required policies; b) has (or can secure) sufficient coverage to meet the licensor’s minimum (e.g., per occurrence) and maximum (e.g. aggregate) limits; c) can add the licensor as an additional named insured; and d) can provide certificate(s) of insurance to licensor within the licensor-proscribed time period. Below is a brief recap of the more common licensor-required policies:
General Liability: Comprehensive policy which covers contractual liability (covers insured in the event that insurer fails to perform under the contract); products liability (covers insured from liability that may incur as the result of some defect in insurer’s manufactured or sold product); property damage (covers insured from property damage from insurer’s defective product); and personal injury (covers insured against personal injuries from insurer’s defective product). Although some license agreements may not require general liability insurance, one or more of these components, most commonly product liability insurance, will be required.
Advertisers Liability: Covers insured against claims for libel, slander, defamation, infringement of copyright, invasion of privacy, etc., arising out of insurer’s advertising program, and may not be applicable if licensee does not advertise its licensed products.
Workers’ Compensation: Covers employees for any injury arising out of and in the course of employment. All states have laws that require such protection for workers and prescribe the length and amount of such benefits provided. A licensor will not require its name to be added to the licensee’s workers’ comp policy and this policy is less frequently addressed in the license agreement.
Errors and Omissions Insurance: Covers insured for mistakes made by non-medical professionals for business mistakes, and also less-frequently required.
“Tip of the Week,” is written by attorney Andrew Richmond, president of the Richmond Management Group, Inc. (RMG). Andy has more than 15 years of business and legal affairs experience with such companies as Fox, Hallmark, Jakks Pacific, and Sony. Currently, as president of RMG, Andy provides his clients with business and legal affairs representation, with a focus on licensing, promotions, marketing, and related matters. Andy can be reached at andy@richmondmanagement.com.
The International Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association (LIMA) has announced its sponsorship of the Brand & Character Licensing Zone at the Creative Market Tokyo 2010 trade fair taking place at Tokyo Big Sight (Tokyo International Exhibition Center) October 13-15. Creative Market Tokyo (CMT) is a rebranding of the Licensing Asia and Tokyo Contents Market held last year. CMT is a one-stop solution trade fair offering a range of creative content featuring new and upcoming properties as well as long-established classics. CMT is an official Japanese government-backed CoFesta (Japan International Contents Festival) event. Co-Festa is the world’s largest comprehensive content festival encompassing games, animation, manga, characters, broadcasting, music, film, fashion, and design. Through CoFesta, CMT will benefit from extensive PR and exposure. New initiatives for CMT’s Brand & Character Licensing Zone include enhanced on-site presentation facilities for property launches, licensee meetings and press briefings, a property display gallery area, and a pre-show e-mail PR service to the trade fair visitor database. Returning programs for 2010 include the licensing awards ceremony, seminars, and complementary distribution of the licensing “Yellow Pages” directory. With a record attendance of nearly 10,000 trade visitors in 2009, CMT is the ideal platform for presenting properties to the Japanese licensing community. LIMA members that exhibit will receive a discount from the exhibition fee. More information on the Brand & Character Licensing Zone at CMT, including downloadable exhibition pamphlets and application forms in English, are available online. Alternatively, please contact the Creative Market Tokyo Brand & Character Licensing Zone Secretariat (Phone: +(81) 3 5282 8105 Fax: +(81) 3 5282 8478 Email: lcsasia@convention-info.net). For information on LIMA Japan, contact info@limajapan.org.
During initial negotiations between a licensor and prospective licensee, a licensor will want to know as much as possible about the prospective licensee. A licensor should perform research to determine whether the licensee is the right fit for representing the licensor’s property, taking into consideration the following factors:
Financials: If the company is publicly traded, the licensor should review reliable, third party finance websites, which will have detailed information on the company. If the company is privately held, the licensor will need to purchase a third-party prepared report (e.g., Dun & Bradstreet report), which includes collected data detailing a company’s credit-worthiness and financial stability. These types of financial data provide the licensor with needed nuts-and-bolts information vital in assessing whether the prospective licensee has the financial ability to succeed with the license opportunity.
Referrals and Recommendations: The licensor should contact other licensors who previously worked with the company to get their assessment of a prospective licensee’s adherence to license agreement provisions, quality and timeliness of work, sales efforts and achievements, payment history, availability for discussions, etc.
Samples: The licensor should require prospective licensees to send samples of past work.
In-person Assessment: The licensor should request a visit to a prospective licensee’s corporate offices, factories, warehouses, etc. This look into the prospective licensee’s business provides the licensor with the opportunity to engage in face-to-face conversations and observe the company’s business operations. Nothing impresses more than a well-run, professional operation.
“Tip of the Week,” is written by attorney Andrew Richmond, president of the Richmond Management Group, Inc. (RMG). Andy has more than 15 years of business and legal affairs experience with such companies as Fox, Hallmark, Jakks Pacific, and Sony. Currently, as president of RMG, Andy provides his clients with business and legal affairs representation, with a focus on licensing, promotions, marketing, and related matters. Andy can be reached at andy@richmondmanagement.com.
Creating and marketing a licensed property is a costly, time-consuming endeavor. To improve the chance of financial success, a licensor may include provisions in its long-form license agreement requiring the licensee to pay additional costs. Depending on the licensor, some or all of these costs may be incorporated in the licensor’s standard agreement. Licensees need to be aware of the existence of these additional costs and raise issue if a given cost is perceived to be excessive or overly burdensome. A few examples and brief definitions of these costs include:
PROMOTIONS
Marketing commitment, the spend requirement to market and promote products and/or licensed property; advertising requirement, the spend requirement on television, radio, and/or print advertising; and artwork if the licensee requires licensor to create unique artwork incorporating the licensed property.
PENALTIES
Late fees if the licensee is late in paying royalties; audit fees if a licensor audit discovers that licensee underpaid past royalties in excess of the agreed percentage; transfer fees if the licensee requests to transfer license rights to another company; and a replacement Style Guide if the licensee loses style guide.
It is the licensee’s duty to identify those costs that are unreasonable, trivial, excessive, etc. and request their removal or reduction, but these additional costs are a necessary and ultimately beneficial part of the licensing process.
“Tip of the Week,” is written by attorney Andrew Richmond, president of the Richmond Management Group, Inc. (RMG). Andy has more than 15 years of business & legal affairs experience with such companies as FOX, Hallmark, JAKKS Pacific, and Sony. Currently, as president of RMG, Andy provides his clients with business and legal affairs representation, with a focus on licensing, promotions, marketing, and related matters. Andy can be reached at andy@richmondmanagement.com.
Mounted Memories, the sports and entertainment memorabilia manufacturing division of Dreams, Inc., has entered into a licensing agreement with Live Nation Merchandise, Inc., to produce framed presentations featuring The Beatles. The first four collectable presentations are now available at The Beatles official online store.
The first framed presentation in the series features miniature images of all 13 of The Beatles’ U.K. album cover images matted in black and complemented with the band’s official logo laser-cut into the matting. The next three presentations in the first wave are titled “1962,” “1963,” and “1964,” and celebrate those years in the band’s career with classic photos from the respective eras along with laser-cut logos. A fifth framed presentation will follow, commemorating The Beatles’ historic first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. It will debut in September.
And on a related note, because I can, I’ll share with you one of my favorite Beatles songs:
When I was little, I absolutely loved the Ramona book series written by Beverly Cleary. The movie version, Ramona and Beezus, comes out today, and I have mixed feelings about this.
Any avid book lover knows that a movie adaptation can go two ways—they can take one of your favorite stories, and all the images you pictured when you read them, and your interpretation of the characters, and totally and completely muck it up—or, they bring delight to millions of fans by bringing our favorite fictional characters to life. This balancing act between a good movie adaptation and a potential disaster is, I think, even more dangerous when we’re talking about children’s books—you don’t want to mess with people’s sense of nostalgia the wrong way.
I’ve seen some great movie adaptations of some of my favorite children’s books—Horton Hears a Who, A Little Princess, Charlotte’s Web—and I’ve also seem some pretty terrible ones, which shall remain nameless here.
The same is true of adult movies—I Am Legend, I Robot, Fight Club (yes people, it was a book first), Romeo and Juliet, My Sister’s Keeper, Lord of the Rings, The Shining, Carrie, It, and on and on.
Why do you think great books get turned into movies? Does it open up a great story for those who wouldn’t normally pick up the book, or dumb down great books and ruin the way the fans remember them? What are some of your favorite book-to-movie adaptations? What makes them successful, or not? Is it the actors, directors, setting, or some subtle combination of these elements that makes it work?
In anticipation of the January 14, 2011 release of Sony Pictures’ action film, TheGreen Hornet, starring Seth Rogen, Rubie’s Costume Co., Inc. has obtained a license to create products ranging from deluxe costumes of Green Hornet and Kato to hats, gloves, masks, and other costumes.
In The Green Hornet, Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) is the son of LA’s most prominent and respected media magnate and perfectly happy to maintain a directionless existence on the party scene—until his father (Tom Wilkinson) mysteriously dies, leaving Britt his vast media empire. Striking an unlikely friendship with one of his father’s more industrious and inventive employees, Kato (Jay Chou), they see their chance to do something meaningful for the first time in their lives: fight crime. To get close to the criminals, they come up with the perfect cover: they’ll pose as criminals themselves. Protecting the law by breaking it, Britt becomes the vigilante The Green Hornet as he and Kato hit the streets.
I’m going to see a performance of RENT this Sunday at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, NJ, performed by Phoenix Productions, central Jersey’s community theatre company. Granted it’s not the Broadway show, but I’m a total RENT-head, and when you have an addiction like mine, you take it where you can get it. Besides, I saw it on Broadway about 15 times (we know where my paycheck goes) before it so sadly closed, so I’m ready for a different atmosphere. I also saw it performed last year by a group of Rutgers college kids at a tiny theatre in New Brunswick, and it was amazing. The passion, precision, coordination, and creativity of those 20-something-aged college kids left me in awe, and frankly, quite a bit jealous. I can barely type and talk at the same time, let alone sing, dance, and act simultaneously.
I love to see my favorite live show, RENT, performed by different people, with different skills sets, in different venues. I love seeing how the same story, with the same lyrics, the same plot and ideals, can be turned into something new and exciting each time with different performers and directors, with different interpretations. And, like any RENT-head, I love my licensed RENT-stuff. I’ve got the T-shirt, sweatshirt, keychain, coffee-table book, and all my playbills. But I’m noticing a shift in licensing when it comes to Broadway; one I’d like to find out more about.
At some point, back in the day, it used to be that Broadway shows spawned licensed products. Fans would see the shows, love them, and want to own merchandise to express that love (exhibit A: my RENT T-shirt). If you walk through the theatre district in NYC, you’ll find loads of gift shops specifically themed around this concept.
Now, however, it seems that instead of great Broadway shows leading to licensed products, other forms of media and entertainment are more and more leading to Broadway shows. What am I talking about? Shrek the musical. Disney on Broadway. Monty Python on Broadway. The Wizard of Oz. Jersey Boys. Grease. Movin’ Out. I even heard a commercial on the radio yesterday advertising that Green Day’s got an award-winning Broadway show.
When did hit properties start leading to Broadway shows instead of the other way around? When and why did the theatre crowd start accepting less “serious” art, such as Monty Python, as appropriate for theatre? How does bringing entertainment such as Green Day and Shrek to Broadway make theatre more appealing and more accessible to the masses, to the “regular folks” who might not have a taste for The Merchant of Venice or Waiting for Godot? When did Broadway become a children’s entertainment venue as well as an adult one? How does this shift increase licensing sales? What’s the legal process for turning an established property, movie, band, or celebrity biography into a licensed Broadway show? How much money does Broadway take in annually from licensed products? Why do we RENT-heads pay to see the same show again and again, and pay so much for those T-shirts, when you know darn well that if I saw a regular old shirt in a store for that price, I would laugh out loud and keep walking?
I think that those questions, and more, might be the beginning of a very interesting Broadway licensing feature.
What’s your favorite Broadway show? Why do you pay so much for Broadway product? For the shows themselves? Please weigh in on this one! Inquiring minds want to know!
–Jennifer Ringler
In case you haven’t seen RENT (in which case you have missed out on one of the best parts of life on Earth), here’s my favorite song from the show:
Lots of properties have fans. Lots of properties have licensed stuff. But every once in awhile, there comes a property that evolves from a brand into a living, ever-changing, sentient being, whose fans become a whole ‘nother species.
One such property is Star Trek. The brand has gone from a TV show to movies to licensed products, then moved on from there to live conventions, costume contests, and so much more—it’s a lifestyle. Like the brand itself, the fans have evolved into a culture of their own, set apart from fans of other properties because of their passion, their fervor, their creativity, and their desire for total immersion.
It is with this in mind that CBS Consumer Products today re-launched www.StarTrek.com, the online destination that brings the brand and its fans together. “StarTrek.com aims to embrace all of fandom and to be as interactive as possible,” reads an article posted on the site, about the site. The site will strive to reach that goal through exclusive celebrity interviews, guest bloggers, breaking news, an online store, biographies, pictures, the inside scoop on events, conventions, live shows, and more.
To check out the site for yourself, and read the complete article introducing the re-launch, click here.
New licensing deals are in the works for DeLorean Motor Company. Mattel has released DeLorean Hot Wheels in black and gold, and Urban Outfitters will be selling Trademarked DeLorean T-shirts in select stores and on www80stees.com. Nike will be producing a DeLorean sneaker, scheduled to debut this fall.
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