The Internet availability of photographs, illustrations and even webpage designs is hammering small businesses that depend on selling and licensing their intellectual property, creators told the Institute for Policy Innovation’s World IP Day event in Washington Monday. Public ignorance more than intentional malfeasance is the problem, enabled by social networking sites and confusion over the distinction between licensing and ownership, they said. The founder of a rights-clearance service for digital music providers said the poor economy and stalled progress in legislation to revamp licensing was spurring the development of private solutions…

…Two-year-old RightsFlow has done well despite or even because of the economic downturn, said Ben Cockerham, chief operating officer for the company, which clears mechanical royalty rights for digital music services and other entities such as church groups. RightsFlow recently began a direct-to-consumer service, Limelight, that has been “overwhelmingly successful” in collecting payments for song use that otherwise would have been done without permission, he said. Licensing will be increasingly important because of advances in manufacturing technology, such as 3D printers, Cockerham said: “The only thing that would have value is the IP.

“

The slow Hill process in reforming Section 115 of the Copyright Act, which governs digital music licensing, has given a boost to private efforts such as RightsFlow’s “one-stop shop,” Cockerham said. The company is working with other parties on proposed revisions to Section 115 at the Copyright Office’s request, he said. One provision that would greatly help licensing services would be access to “authorship data,” which is often hard to find outside proprietary databases, Cockerham said. Publishers often refuse to tell RightsFlow which of their works are covered by a license, leaving the company vulnerable to a lawsuit if uncleared works end up in bulk orders, he said. “There’s not much surety” in the licensing business. — Greg Piper

Click Here to Read the Full Article