MARQUES produces IAM toolkit

MARQUES, the Association of European Trade Mark Owners, had a surprise for those attending its 22nd Annual Meeting in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, last week. Each participant received, as part of the conference pack, an intellectual asset management toolkit that includes

* a generic intellectual asset management PowerPoint presentation
* case studies
* catch phrases
* articles and
* useful links.

This is a tremendous initiative from the MARQUES Intellectual Asset Management Team, who should be warmly congratulated for their efforts. Anyone wanting to know more about this Toolkit, or who wishes to help build on the foundations laid by the MARQUES IAM Team, should contact Ben Goodger (Rouse Legal) for further details.

Blockbuster innovations: time to cash in?

University tech transfer offices (TTOs) in the United States are reported to be cashing in on their blockbuster innovations are sitting pretty. The current environment in royalty monetization is a "sellers' market", as is evidenced by several recent sales of big royalty streams. There is also a rise in the number of businesses now lining up as potential buyers. n particular, Royalty Pharma has been involved in the following deals:

* the sale by Children's Hospital Foundation (Philadelphia) of its royalty interest in the oral gastroenteritis vaccine RotaTeq for $182 million in cash;
* Northwestern University's sale of a portion of its worldwide royalty stake in pain treatment drug Lyrica for $700 million in cash;
* New York University's sale of rheumatoid arthritis drug Remicade for $650 million in cash, plus additional payments if sales exceed certain milestones.

The market is worth watching, so see whether the increased interest in royalty interests can be correlated with uncertainties over more traditional income routes during the current period of sustained economic uncertainty.

Source: "A Seller's Market", in The Deal.

Times Online to reap rewards of user access to its archive

In a curious case of one newspaper reporting on the business model of another, the Guardian records that the highly popular Times Online is to charge for access to its hitherto free online archive service. The change, in the form of a 'paywall', comes in with effect from this Thursday.

Times Online will erect a paywall in front of its fledgling online archive service from Thursday, now that it appears that a solid user base has developed. Access rates are said to be £4.95 per day, £14.95 per month or £74.95 per year. Featured front page items will remain free.

Times Online has had to choose between monetising its extensive archive by opening pages for free and relying on advertising, or relying on traditional business-to-business revenues from libraries. The solution adopted means that sites can preserve their existing contracts with library firms, while keeping the service available to consumers; it is likely to be seen as a more stable revenue stream in the current economic climate.

The archive itself goes back to 1785 and is likely to contain a sizeable proportion of works in respect of which Times Online is not the copyright owner and has no right to store or control.

Bollywood: time to invest in cross-over products?

In "Bollywood duets with the west", Joe Leahy writes in the Financial Times about the increasingly serious flirtation between Indian films and music on the one hand and the lucrative Western market on the other. Although the Indian diaspora in the West is sizeable, there is doubt as to whether it alone can provide and sustain a sufficient commercial incentive for the large-scale mainline exploitation of rights in those works. This article asks, however, whether the Indian product may, at least in part, prove attractive to Western audiences in its own right, being a refreshingly colourful and escapist alternative to the slick, narrative-oriented productions that hail from US studios.

The prospect of mining a fresh stream of IP in India and sending it west is tantalising. But questions of money arise. How much does one invest in effectively untried entertainment products? And how great is the scope for the development of 'cross-over' products which seek to blend the Indian genre with non-Indian elements of music, plot, dress or location?

The article mentions that Reliance Big Entertainment is currently working with Hollywood director Steven Spielberg on a joint venture, with initial funding of $500m (£285m); other projects are cited too. Other projects may follow, depending on the real or apparent success of the pioneers.

What is to be of the CHRYSLER brand?

The tendency to disassociate trademarks from manufacturing and production misses the complex interrelationship between the two. Of particular interest is the move by a company from being an anonymous contract manufacturer (think of Taiwan and the semiconductor and electronics industries) to brand holder, whereby the manufacturer attempts to garner the value-added of consumer goodwill for its products.

The move from manufacturer to brand holder is not an easy one. The seemingly endless gestation of the ACER mark is testament to the difficulties that even the most successful contract manufacturer faces when it seeks to enter the brand-building and goodwill-generating arena.

An interesting twist on this phenomenon was reported recently in Business Week, under the title "A Strange Detour for Chrysler." We all know that US car manufacturers are in a dire straights, battered by gas that is too dear for many Americans, and stuck with dinosaur-sized SUVs that interest only the curator at the Smithsonian Institute. What to do with the excess manufacturing and distribution capacity? Chrysler seems to have come up with a challenging solution--turn yourself in a contract manufacturer and even a marketer of the cars of others.

The new home for SUVs?

As reported, it is not just that Chrysler is planning to put the CHRYSLER mark on a restyled Versa subcompact made by Nissan. After all, sharing platforms and the like is already old-hat in the auto industry. What is more interesting is that Chrysler is negotiating with Nissan to sell Nissan's ALTIMA brand vehicle through the Chrysler sales and distribution network. Moreover, Chrysler is also reported to be offering itself as an "assembler-for-hire" for any manufacturer that wants to sell truck and minivan products, but might want to save on the costs of manufacturer and production. (Why anyone wants to get into this business at the moment, especially since Chrysler itself has been a market leader, is another question, but both Nissan and Volkswagen seem to be interested of renting the Chrysler facilities for this purpose.)

One can be skeptical about this and ask the obvious question: If the name of the game in the US auto industry is to try and design cars that US consumers are likely to buy in an age of elevated oil prices, and if Chrysler is committed to protecting its brand, why is it selling cars for Nissan and making minivans for Volkswagen? That seems to be a sure-fire formula for brand dilution or worse. Should not Chrysler be committing 150% of its resources to designing, building and selling cars that Americans will want to buy?

According to the report, the reason for these measures can be found at the doorstep of Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity entity that forked over $7.4 billion dollars for 80% of Chrysler. Chrysler, aka Cerberus, needs to find ways to save cash and reduce costs. Better to generate an income stream for your underutilized sales and manufacturing facilities, even if they might dilute the long-term value of the marks and names.

Maybe that is the key point here. Maybe there isn't any long-term plan for preserving Chrysler as a going-concern and with it, the CHRYSLER name and brand. Save and cut costs today, and sell-off the company tomorrow. The name (in whole or in part) will go, and the sales and manufacturing capacities will change hands to someone else better able to turn them into successful product lines--but under that person's name and brand.

First you cut cookies, then you cut brands.

Differential calculus: the AG opines in STIM v Kanal 5 and TV 4

The Opinion of the Advocate General in Case C-52/07 Kanal 5 and TV 4 v STIM (not yet available in English) makes fascinating reading. It addresses a reference from Sweden to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling on the circumstances in which different forms of royalty calculation levied by a copyright collecting society may be viewed as abusive exercises of the performing rights in its portfolio. A note on this case appears on the IPKat weblog, which credits Franck Latrémolière (Reckon) as its source.

On average, once the Advocate General has given an Opinion it takes some 5-6 months for the Court to rule. That would suggest that we should have some guidance from the court next Spring.

Reed to sell, but is the target price the right one?

A little snippet of news from Times Online sheds some light on the value of magazine titles. Publishing group Reed Elsevier is believed to be offering about £190 million in vendor financing from its own balance sheet in the sale of its trade magazines arm. Further developments are worth watching, particularly if the view is correct that trade magazines, like most of the periodical print sector, are suffering from erosion of advertising revenue, declining sales and a weak economic outlook.