Rights holder negotiations: music, engines, characters
We will find every owner of the material you want to use, ask for the uses you need, and press for a permission that covers the trailer and the stream as well as the game.
Layers in one record
Слоёв прав у записи
three
три
Formalities
Формальности
none required
не требуются
When you need to negotiate with a rights holder
Two owners answer for one song
You found the track and the person who wrote it said yes. The recording you actually want to use belongs to somebody else, and so does the performance on it.
The licence covers the game only
Permission was given for the build. Then the trailer went out, a streamer played it and a tournament broadcast it, and none of those were in the sentence you signed.
The engine terms changed under you
A tool you have shipped with for two years published new terms. Which wording governs the version already in your build is decided by the licence's own clause on changing terms.
A character you built on is theirs
The design came from a comic, a novel or another studio. What you add on top is yours unless the licence says otherwise — and it still cannot ship without the owner underneath.
An asset came from a marketplace
A model or a sound pack was bought with a card and dropped into the project. Whether that purchase let you sell it inside a paid product is decided by terms nobody opened.
What you get
- A licence that names the uses
- A request to every owner
- A term you can plan on
- Proof of the whole chain
- A fallback if talks fail
What is required to negotiate a licence
Negotiating with a rights holder starts one step earlier: with the question of how many holders there are. A song, an engine, a font, a voice and a character each carry several layers, and a yes from the wrong one is worth nothing.
Who is on the other side
A recorded song is the clearest case, and it has three layers. The music and the words have an author; the performance on the record has a performer; and the record itself belongs to whoever took the initiative for the first fixation of the sound and carried the responsibility for it. The treaty on performances and phonograms gives performers and producers rights of their own, each at least fifty years — for the performer from the year the performance was fixed, for the producer from the year the record was published, or from the year it was made where publication did not follow within fifty years.
Two consequences follow. A licence from one layer does not carry the others: a signed page from the composer leaves the record untouched. And none of it waits on a register — the treaty says these rights are subject to no formality, so an owner who has filed nothing still has to agree.
What the licence has to name
- Every use, one by one: the build, the trailer, the store page, the soundtrack, streams and broadcasts.
- The territory and platforms, and whether new ones count.
- The term, and what happens to copies already sold when it ends.
- Whether you may change the material: cut it, loop it, re-arrange it or have it re-recorded.
- Whether you may pass the permission on to a publisher.
- The credit: the exact wording, and where it has to appear.
Credit is not a courtesy
A performer keeps the right to be identified — except where the manner of the use dictates the omission — and to object to a modification of the performance that would harm their reputation. The treaty holds those rights independently of the economic ones and keeps them after a transfer, and leaves the means of enforcing them to the law of the place where protection is claimed.
For a game that matters at the moment you edit: a loop, a cut or a pitch shift is a modification, and the owner of the money side may not be the one who can consent.
What you send with the request
- What exactly you want to use, down to version and length.
- Where it will appear, including outside the game.
- What you want to be allowed to change.
- When you need the answer, and what you do without it.
Where a permission breaks
- A licence for “the game” that says nothing about the trailer.
- A marketplace purchase treated as a licence to resell inside a paid product.
- A permission signed by a manager or a label without the layer that actually holds the right.
- A term shorter than the life of the game.
The document that hands your game to a publisher is a publishing agreement; buying a right outright instead of licensing it is licensing and acquisition of intellectual property.
Sources: the Performances and Phonograms Treaty of the World Intellectual Property Organization, articles 2, 5, 17 and 20 — who counts as a producer, the performer's moral rights and the exception to them, terms of at least fifty years, and no formality.
Stages of work
Finding every owner — about a week.
We will take the material apart into layers and find who holds each one. For a record that means the writing, the performance and the recording, each held separately.
Writing down the uses you need.
We will list them before anyone is asked: the build, the trailer, the store page, the soundtrack, streams and broadcasts.
The first approach.
We will write the request so it can be answered with a yes: what you want, where it appears, for how long, and what you are asking to be allowed to change.
Term, territory and money.
We will negotiate how long the permission runs, where it reaches, and what is paid for it — one sum, a share, or nothing at all where the owner wants the exposure.
Modification and credit.
We will press for editing rights in the words your audio team needs, and for a credit line whose wording and place are fixed in the text.
The record, and where it lives.
You get a written record of every request sent and every answer received and, where an owner agreed, the signed permission — kept with the build it belongs to.
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