Michael Jackson owned the song Revolution and sold a one year right to use it in advertising shoes in 1987. Lawsuits abounded. A Revolution occurred.
The upshot was people realized that there was a ton of money to be made re-introducing through ads old music. Not only did Nike sales of shoes jump, sales of Beatles records jumped.
As my friends in Hollywood tell me, it was the beginning of Michael Jackson's troubles. As owner of most of the Beatles songs, Tommy Mottola of Sony got the idea if he could get control of those, there was fantastic sums to be gained. Michael would not play ball. So the next thing was to ruin Jackson financially, through media managed false accusations of child abuse, and then Jackson would have to sell the portfolio of Beatles songs to pay the lawyers. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
But to my point, I recall George Harrison saying at this time "We wrote those songs to sell records, not shoes." Exactly. The records is the thing that sells, and how money is to be made. The music sells the piece of plastic, the digital download, or the CD. So they Beatles sold records, and made money.
Why do the rest of us have to pay for a system that gets us all involved in all of this? Nike made the Beatles new money by using their songs to sell shoes. The Beatles had nothing to do with Nike, why does Nike have to pay the Beatles anything. Now, I could see how, absent an IPR regime, Nike would pay the Beatles $250,000 anyway, just to get a thumbs up from the Beatles, because a bad word hurts very much, from the Beatles. No IPT necessary.
With IPR we just get these nasty lawsuits.
A lawyer once told me he knows he got a good settlement when both parties are unhappy with the agreement. A lawsuit is about striking an agreement between aggrieved parties.
In business, both sides step away from the table happy. Why do business schools teach their students to convert every business problem to a legal problem? Thirty five years in this business and I've never called on a lawyer.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
The upshot was people realized that there was a ton of money to be made re-introducing through ads old music. Not only did Nike sales of shoes jump, sales of Beatles records jumped.
As my friends in Hollywood tell me, it was the beginning of Michael Jackson's troubles. As owner of most of the Beatles songs, Tommy Mottola of Sony got the idea if he could get control of those, there was fantastic sums to be gained. Michael would not play ball. So the next thing was to ruin Jackson financially, through media managed false accusations of child abuse, and then Jackson would have to sell the portfolio of Beatles songs to pay the lawyers. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
But to my point, I recall George Harrison saying at this time "We wrote those songs to sell records, not shoes." Exactly. The records is the thing that sells, and how money is to be made. The music sells the piece of plastic, the digital download, or the CD. So they Beatles sold records, and made money.
Why do the rest of us have to pay for a system that gets us all involved in all of this? Nike made the Beatles new money by using their songs to sell shoes. The Beatles had nothing to do with Nike, why does Nike have to pay the Beatles anything. Now, I could see how, absent an IPR regime, Nike would pay the Beatles $250,000 anyway, just to get a thumbs up from the Beatles, because a bad word hurts very much, from the Beatles. No IPT necessary.
With IPR we just get these nasty lawsuits.
A lawyer once told me he knows he got a good settlement when both parties are unhappy with the agreement. A lawsuit is about striking an agreement between aggrieved parties.
In business, both sides step away from the table happy. Why do business schools teach their students to convert every business problem to a legal problem? Thirty five years in this business and I've never called on a lawyer.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
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