Jack White

The brilliant young composer, Jack White, who wrote the score for Ballet Cymru's Cinderella which was our ballet of the year for 2015 against some incredibly strong competition (see Highlights of 2015 29 Dec 2015) and Stuck in the Mud for the same company (see An Explosion of Joy 21 Sept 2014) has just published his soundtrack for Cinderella on his website (see Cinderella soundtrack now available 2 May 2017).

Very fairly, Jack has invited his licensees to name their price for permission to download and replay his music. But please remember that "name your price" does not mean "pay nowt" even if you come from Yorkshire like these monkeys.

Hear nowt, see nowt, say nowt
Eat owt, drink owt and pay nowt
And if thou ever does owt for nowt
do it for th''sen

Author Tumi
Unrestricted Licence

Copyright subsists in Jack's work and will continue to subsist in it at least in Wales and England for the rest of Jack's life plus 70 years and in some places even longer.  So as he has played fair with you, you play fair with him.

Jack tells me that he has recently been commissioned to write a score for the National Dance Company of Wales which will be premiered later in the year.

He likes writing for ballet and contemporary dance companies. I invite every artistic director and choreographer from Alaska to Australia to give Jack's music a listen.

Branding and Ballet - Ten Top Tips

Whenever possible I try to get the company's T-shirt when I watch them performing in a ballet. So far I have T-shirts from

• Ballet Black
• Ballet Cymru
• Rambert
• The Dutch National Ballet
• The Royal Ballet, and
• The Stuttgart Ballet.

I also have a ballet bag from the Bristol Russian Ballet School and I'be bought English National Ballet's My First Coppelia t-shirts for Vlad the Lad and my Huddersfield ballet teacher's younger daughter. It is a way of supporting those companies and one that I much prefer to the doling out of public money by the Arts Council of England. 

The reason I feel uncomfortable about it is that I can't really think of an answer to my fellow citizens who see opera and ballet as all right for those who like that sort of thing but it shouldn't be their brass that pays for it. Now don't get me wrong. I love opera, ballet and all the other performing arts. I am delighted that my beloved Northern Ballet was favoured in the Arts Council's latest round of investment in opera and ballet. But I am not sure that Arts Council funding is particularly fair to those who prefer their money to be spent in other ways and when I look across the Atlantic where just about every town of any size has its own company that is supported strongly by its local community (some of which such as the Sarasota Ballet seem to be rather good) I have to ask whether this form of subsidy is even good for the performing arts. The Arts Council was promoted by one of its first chairmen Lord Keynes (see "John Maynard Keynes and English Ballet" 3 March 2013). Like a lot of Lord Keynes's ideas that wilted under the scrutiny of Thatcherism in the 1980s direct funding for the performing arts may have to be reconsidered.

Even if the Arts Council can be justified the funds available to it for investment are unlikely to grow by much and there is also a limit to the amount of money that the hard pressed public can afford to pay for tickets or donations.  As I said in "Ballet as a Brand? How to bring More Money into Dance for Companies and Dancers" 13 March 2014 companies, theatres, dancers (at least principals) and possibly even schools and dancers will have to exploit their goodwill a little more in the way that sports stars and artists in the other performing arts have done. To that end I wrote three further articles to show how that could be done:

• "Protecting the Brand" 31 March 2014
• Branding and Ballet - Licensing the Brand 18 April 2014, and
• Branding and Ballet - Copyright and Rights in Performances 3 May 2014

This is a summary of the advice that I gave in those articles. It applies to everyone in dance - individual artists and teachers as well as institutions.

1. Register your business name and any logo as trade marks: You can do it yourself on-line for the UK from as little as £170 though I would advise you to last out a few hundred pounds more and get a trade mark or patent agent to do it for you. He or she will make a search to make sure there are no conflicting registrations, prepare a specification that covers all your needs, file it and correspond with the Intellectual Property Office or other registry until you have your grant. There are two advantages of registration, First it is easier to protect and license branded merchandise. Secondly, it trumps anything a cyber-squatter can say in a domain name dispute. If you do it yourself make sure you cover all the countries in which you want to perform or sell your merchandise and that your registration covers clothing, printed matter and anything else you can see yourself selling in the next five years.
2. Subscribe to a good watch service. A watch service scours the IPO and other patent office websites for applications that could conflict with your registrations and reports back to you if it finds any.  Most patent and trade mark agents can set up such a subscription for you though they tend to be on the pricey side. Leeds Business and IP Centre runs a good service. Call Ged or Stef on 0113 247 8266 for more info.
3. Keep an audit trail of all your artistic, choreographic, literary and musical works. As I said in "Branding and Ballet - Copyright and Rights in Performances" copyright and rights in performances are not registered rights. They come to being when a qualified person creates an original artistic, dramatic, literary or musical work or, in the case of dancers and musicians, takes part in live performances.  The best way of proving your title is by means of contemporaneous notes and logs with references back to the stave on which the choreology or music is recorded.
4. Review and keep under review all your licences and other agreements. This applies both to people who serve you such as your choreographers, dancers and musicians and also to those who want to take licences from you. Make sure these are drawn up professionally and that you enforce them.
5. Take out adequate insurance to cover claims by you and against you.   IP litigation is expensive and is usually excluded from most legal risk indemnity programs. There are some specialist companies that provide such a service and it is worth looking out for them (see my article "IP Insurance Five Years on" 23 Oct 2010 Inventors Club blog).
6. Be sure to talk to a lawyer first if you think someone has infringed your IPR. That is because some statutes such as the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Trade Marks Act 1994 provide a cause of action against those who threaten litigation without justification (see "If you think someone has infringed your patent talk to a lawyer first" 11 July 2014 Inventors Club biog).
7. Carry out periodic IP audits. You are creating new works all the time and also licensing in and out other peoples' work. Make sure that everything is covered.
8. If someone infringes your rights don't ignore it. There's an expression in the law that delay defeats equity. At the very least delay in enforcing your rights could prevent your getting an interim injunction. At the worst it could be seen as acquiescence.
9. Make others aware of your IP rights.  Use the copyright symbol (c) and the registered trade mark symbol to make the public aware of your rights. That way they can't use the defence of ignorance.
10. Get your audiences on your side. Folk who have paid a lot of money for their tickets are understandably annoyed when the first thing they hear is an order not to use cameras or mobile phones. But if you explain why they will co-operate with you even to the point of stopping their neighbours from surreptitiously photographing or taping your show.

This is the last of my articles on ballet and branding. It is my gift back to the artists and impresarios who have given me so much pleasure over the years. I hope that at least some of you will find my tips useful.

Branding and Ballet - Licensing the Brand

In "Ballet as a Brand? How to bring More Money into Dance for Companies and Dancers" 13 March 2014 I argued that more could be done to raise funds and indeed dancers' incomes by harnessing the enormous goodwill enjoyed by companies, theatres and individual dancers. In "Protecting the Brand" 31 March 2014 I counselled companies, theatres and dancers to protect their goodwill by registering their names, logos or other signs as trade marks. In this article I discuss the legal instrument by which the goodwill is monetized. That is to say the licence.

Watch the Spelling
In the UK and most other English speaking countries the noun licence is spelt with a "c" and the very "to license" with an "s".  In the United States, however, both the noun and the verb are spelt with an "s". The distinction between the verb and the noun is a very convenient one but some people including, sadly, even a few lawyers find it confusing and get mixed up.

What is a Licence?
A licence is another word for permit or consent. A familiar example is a TV licence that allows us to watch television. Without such a licence it is unlawful to watch a live broadcast in the UK however it is transmitted. There are also licences that permit us to do something for which we would otherwise be sued like park a car on someone's land. The sort of licences that we are talking about are intellectual property ("IP") licences.

What is IP?
IP is the collective name for the bundle of rights that protect investment in intellectual assets. Intellectual assets are such things as books, goodwill, inventions, performances and software that have been made by creative or inventive people.  Examples of IP rights are patents for inventions, trade marks for the signs by which the public recognize a supplier or his or her products in the market place, copyright for literary and artistic works and rights in performances for the right to film, tape or broadcast an actor, dancer or musician's performance.

What is an IP Licence?
That is a licence to do an act such as sell a product or supply a service under a trade mark or film or broadcast a performance by a dancer that is restricted to the IP owner.  Without such a licence, such a person can be sued by the trade mark owner or dancer.  Licences can be oral or written and they can arise expressly or impliedly. However, most IP licences are in writing and drafted by specialist lawyers.

Types of Licence
Licences can be exclusive, non-exclusive or sole.

Exclusive licences are those in which an IP owner ("the licensor") transfers all his or her rights in the IP including the right to prevent others from exploiting the IP to the person to whom those rights are granted ("the licensee") with the result that the licensee can prevent anyone in the world including the licensor  from exercising those rights. Many agreements to make and sell goods bearing a company's name, logo or coat of arms in a specified location are exclusive licences.

Non-exclusive licences are those in which more than one licensee (and, of course, the licensor) can exercise the rights that are granted but only the licensor can prevent third parties from exercising the rights. Software is usually supplied to end-users under a non-exclusive licence known as a "EULA" (end user's licence agreement").

Sole licences are non-exclusive licences in which the licensor agrees to grant only one licence.

Licensing your IP
Before you enter negotiations for a licence it is a good idea to read the Intellectual Property Office ("IPO")'s booklet on Licensing IP in the IP Health Check series. The IPO has also published a Skeleton Licence or check list of the terms commonly found in licence agreements. The provisions to which you should give particular attention are as follows:

• What exactly are you licensing and how is the licence to be exercised? For instance, is this to be a non-exclusive licence to print you logo or image on t-shirts and sell those t-shirts in the UK. Do you want your licensee to be able to make other products or export them? If so, how will that affect your agreements with licensees elsewhere? Also, are those foreign licensees allowed to export their goods here in competition with you or your British licensee?
• Quality Control. You have put a lot of effort into building up a national and international reputation and you don't want it trashed or trivialized. Any goods bearing your name or logo must be made of good quality materials with high standards of workmanship and they must be packaged attractively. But how do you make sure that is done? And what are the consequences if it isn't?
• Defending and Enforcing the IP? Which party is responsible for the legal fees if a third party infringed the IP or challenges its validity. Legal fees can mount quickly in litigation, particularly in the UK.
• How are you to be paid? When? Where? In what currency? How can you be sure that the right amount is paid? Do you have the right to audit your licensee's accounts? What happens if he or she does not pay you on time?
• What happens if your licensee under-performs? Do you have the right to appoint another licensee or even terminate the licence?
• What happens if your licensee becomes insolvent? Do you really want to be dealing with a liquidator or the licensee's creditors?
• There are bound to be disputes and differences but how are they to be resolved and under which legal system?

Professional Advice

On all those matters you will need professional advice not just from lawyers but also accountants and maybe patent or trade mark attorneys. The Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales has a searchable database of their member firms by geography and specialization. So, too, does the Law Society for solicitors, the Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys and the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys. You can now access the Bar direct and you can consult the Intellectual Property Bar Association for a barrister specializing in IP. The corresponding association for solicitors is the Intellectual Property Lawyers Association.

Further Information
As I said in my previous article I am making this information available to the ballet world pro bono as a thank you for all the pleasure dancers, companies, theatres and schools have given me throughout my life.  I will answer any questions that anyone has by phone or email. My number is 020 7404 5252 and you can contact me through my contact form, twitter, Linkedin, G+. Facebook or Xing.