I have a thing for licenses

I am writing this on a Friday night and giving heavy consideration to why I like licenses so much. It's possible your weekend is giving you more of a rush than mine.  I can live with that. 

I realize it is possible that licenses may be boring little concepts to you.  To me they they are boring little concepts that earn me money.  I meant to say, to me they result from a patchwork of content control issues that evolved over time, and are, in fact interesting.  I like that despite whether you are licensing iPod the rights to your song, or the content of the phone book to Ma Bell, the essential structure of a license is always the same.  Someone owns or controls some content or technology and wants you to use it and pay something for its use. 

You can license copyrights, trademarks and patents, but there are a "bundle" of rights that usually come along for the ride. I will not bore you with those details.  (Tip: When on a date with a lawyer, bring up "bundles of rights" well before his/her second cocktail if at all)

The concept of a "license" is actually found in real estate law.  Unlike buying a piece of property, a license bestows no ongoing property rights in the holder but instead permission to enter under certain very limited conditions.  Years ago, my real estate teacher used the example of a ticket to a baseball game as the classic license because its very limited.  

Similarly, in the world of intellectual property licenses, the license holder takes no ownership rights in the original thing being licensed but modern licensing affords as many rights of use as it can have to exploit every aspect to 3rd parties.  In other words, licenses are drafted so they are comprehensive, however they still do not bestow ownership on the licensee (the one purchasing the license right). 

Despite some complex languange, licenses tend to deal with simple issues.  People I encounter always ask me to stop preceding every sentence I say with "wherefore." Thusly, I have drafted a basic license in the voice of a non-lawyer:

LICENSE

1. Hey. You're giving me the right to use your stuff in any way I want and anywhere in the territory.

2. You will give the stuff to me by next tuesday. Don't be late.

3. Your stuff belongs to you, but I am going to keep it and use it, and you cannot let anyone else use it.

4.  At some point I may be done with your stuff, and when I am done, you will get it back.  It could be a while.

5.  This stuff better belong to you--I mean totally. I hope you secured all of the rights needed.  I don't want some dude from Boulder telling me that's he helped you or that this stuff damaged his business or that his mother was injured because we released it.

6.  I mean it.  If his mother comes after us, or whatever, we'll hire some lawyer, but you are going to pay us back for damages and legal costs, even if it's an expensive or slow talking lawyer.

7. We may make all kinds of stuff from this stuff and we may find other people to license the stuff to so they can make stuff. 

8. We're giving you a percent from the money we made selling the stuff called a royalty.

8.  I think I'll add a bunch of paragraphs at the end that will scare you, but your lawyer will agree it's all good.

Thus concludes a basic discussion of licenses. I can't get enough of them.