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F.1 Rights in a Manifestation

The rights in a Manifestation are typically licences, contracts or agreements between the Work’s copyright owner / intellectual property rights owner, and a third party, enabling that third party to exploit the work legally by copying it, distributing, broadcasting or publishing it, extracting from it, incorporating it in another work, etc.

Typically, a Work’s owner can offer multiple licences to multiple parties to exploit the work in different publication territories, publication formats, publication platforms; and typically the licence can be exclusive or non-exclusive (in other words, multiple parties can be granted similar exploitation rights to the same work at the same time). Finally, the licence typically states a date range within which the exploitation can take place, with the extreme (and rare) example being ‘in perpetuity’, enabling the licensee to exploit the work within the terms without an end date.

Examples of publication modes or platforms and other exploitation models which are often used in moving image Manifestation licences: Theatrical, Home Video, Television, VOD (Video on Demand), DTO (Download to Own), Educational, B2B (Business to Business) footage sales, Plane/Ship/Hotel.(see Manifestation Types).

Often an exploitation of a moving image Work in a particular Manifestation requires the licensee to obtain additional clearances from third parties, as these ‘underlying rights’ (eg music, performers, stills) exist in parallel to the core intellectual property rights in the moving image Work. Depending on the context, and the importance of this information for the institution, the cataloguer may consider capturing the clearance of these underlying rights, as previously described in H.1.1.6.

Finally, where an archive holds copyright / intellectual property rights in a work, that archive may itself grant licences to third parties to exploit the work. This situation, where the archive supplies permission or licence to another party to exploit a work, is often referred to as ‘rights out’ or sales – the opposite of ‘rights in’ or acquisitions, meaning the archive obtains an exploitation licence from the owner. In that case, the cataloguer should document not only rights in but also rights out: name and contact details for licensee, territories, platforms, date ranges, exclusive or non-exclusive.

Given the context above, it may be useful for an archive to capture whether it is an acquirer of the manifestation rights being documented, a granter of the rights, or simply a documenter of the rights.

  1. Relationship to rights being documented:

a. Rights Out / Sales (where the archive is the granter of rights to an external party)

b. Rights In / Acquisitions (where the archive is the obtainer of rights from an external party)

c. Documenter only (where the archive is neither the granter or obtainer, but simply an observer)

  1. Licensee organisation’s or individual’s name, with contact details if required

  2. Licensing organisation’s or individual’s name, with contact details if required

  3. Platforms or modes permitted within the license, using controlled value list. Suggested terms include: Theatrical, Home Video, Television, VOD (Video on Demand), DTO (Download to Own), Educational, B2B (Business to Business) footage sales, Plane/Ship/Hotel.

  4. Geographical territories permitted within the license, using controlled value list representing the relevant territories

  5. Date range of license, preferably entered separately as Start Date and End Date, to enable system queries against end date

  6. Exclusive or non-Exclusive, where known

  7. Filename of agreement: Capture the filename of an electronic version of any agreement pertaining to the manifestation’s licence, or where possible a link to the file in a persistent, available directory within the organisation’s infrastructure.