Our services portfolio includes solutions to support all our clients’ IP global management needs along four axes. First, by helping them define and implement the right strategies, second, by protecting their licensing rights, third, by improving net revenues from their customers, and finally, by securing their IP protection under any non-compliance situation or any external threat.
Most of our clients have their IP assets in the core of their business. The adequate management of their IP involves ascertaining the company’s intangible assets, designing management processes to safeguard them, and utilizing the IP assets to help determine their competitive edge. Seven Eighths helps leading industries assess their IP management strategy and develop a compliance policy that ensures they extract full benefit of their assets. We also help them building the awareness and positive perception of their IP value by end users and the channel ecosystem.
As part of our commitment to clients, we offer our expertise to partner companies and IP right holders to assess, develop, improve and optimize their licensing compliance policy and ensure its consistency with the IP management strategy. Compliance policy should aim to provide best protection to intellectual property rights and ensure the adequate business framework with customers, end users and channel ecosystem. Compliance policy definitions cover detailed analysis regarding the options and strategy of compliance assurance, communication regarding obligations and conditions, monitor behavior of licensees, verification mechanisms and non-compliance consequences. Our experience in the development of complex compliance policies oriented to global software publishers and our contribution in managing compliance activity around the world for several industries, allow us to be leaders in the definition and development of state of the art compliance policies.
The core of our activity. More than a decade of experience working for top software publishers and leading consumer and entertainment industries around the world helping these industry leaders manage their license strategy and their compliance activity: from the conceptual design through the execution. Every initiative is carefully designed, implemented and executed with the adequate mix of elements and always considering all pertinent perspectives (legal & IP, technical, business, consultancy and marketing). Our license management and compliance services cover every detail of the initiatives, including targeting (segmentation, profiling scoring), engagement, investigation, discovery, measurements, factual verification, compliance analysis, results sharing and findings positioning, negotiation and resolution.
Audit services are delivered to Intellectual Property right holders as an integral part of the compliance function. The goal is to ensure that licensees, comply with their agreements on licensing policies. It is generally the opportunity and means by which ?the IP right-holder enhances transparency through fact based license verifications, in order to reinforce the licensee’s knowledge, awareness and compliance while proactively addressing any potential deficiencies. Our audit services are mainly focused in two areas: Licensing obligations and royalties. Consisting in the analysis and investigation of a licensee’s compliance with the various obligations, financial and otherwise, laid out in the license agreement. These complex audits are focused in the financial compliance – generally determined through the examination of the accounting books and records of the licensee and its sub-licensees- as to the complete spectrum of obligations (licensed territory, distribution, marketing, etc.). Experienced auditors (accountants, forensic, legal, technical) assure the factual verification deep analysis of the contractual compliance situation.
The complexity of the obligations related to license agreements requires proactive attention of the intellectual property rights-holders. Very often, non-compliance situations are produced due to lack of knowledge or awareness of the license obligations and restrictions. Advisory services reinforce the business relationship, enhances the transparency and trust between the IP owner and the licensee and assure the full compliance with the contractual obligations. Through our advisory services, IP licensees gain an in-depth understanding of licensing conditions and applicable policies so they can better manage their investment and assure the full compliance. These services are promoted by the IP owner and normally are aimed to specific group of licensees.
Special service for software industry, true up services aims to provide an assessment of the software deployment and usage in order to generate a reconciliation of actual usage versus their entitlements For Microsoft® end users true-up services include a complete inventory deployment in the organization, online Software Asset Register (SAR) update and the generation of the Effective License Position (ELP).
Unauthorized copy, usage or distribution of works protected by copyright laws constitute intellectual property infringements. The losses that run into millions due to copyright piracy require the source of the problem to be addressed holistically: both creating the proper market awareness as well as the execution of effective remedies. Our antipiracy services include the study of piracy incidence, measures to track and limit illegal copies’ distribution, identification of infringements, converting illegal users to legal licensees and legal remedies.
Our legal team is specialized in IT&IP Law and focused on the protection of our clients’ Intellectual Property, with legal professionals from different countries and jurisdictions that ensure a global perspective with local solutions. We provide pre-litigation assistance aimed both to prepare and ensure future enforcement actions and/or to try to avoid the need for initiating legal actions. This activity may include cease & desist letters, legal warning communications as well as preliminary motions before a Court of Law. We also represent Intellectual Property Owners in Commercial, Civil and Criminal Courts of Law in different jurisdictions and our legal team benefits from the multidisciplinary nature of our organization receiving internal technical support and business perspective to achieve the best possible outcomes for our clients.
We conduct investigations and factual evidence collection to detect and/or prove non- compliance or potential illegal activity of the distribution channel. With broad experience in investigations including activity monitor, mystery shoppers, police investigations and collection of evidences, we support the entire strategy to ensure the legal enforcement of the channel ecosystem.
Education and awareness are essential for intellectual property management. Specially in cases where end users or licensees are a huge universe, the complexity of rules, obligations and restrictions cannot be easily followed due to a lack of knowledge and/or awareness. We have proven experience in Education and Awareness initiatives, designed, implemented and executed to educate end users, licensees, the channel ecosystem and different market players in the licensing field, providing best practices and awareness of legal implication of illegal usage of the protected work.
IP holders that are focused on incremental business prefer to outsource the entire intellectual property and license management and compliance activity, trusting in our firm to develop and drive strategies that ensure the intellectual property protection, the licensee’s compliance and the maximization of business through revenue generation. Special care is taken on customer satisfaction and long term business relationship. Normally, full IP license management and compliance activity involves the design and definition of the strategy, policy, contractual framework and the development of initiatives in a holistic approach, including investigation and detection of possible non-compliance customers, the targeting and segmentation of customers, the execution of engagements and the transformation of non-compliance situations into revenue opportunities for our clients.
The selection of potential targets to whom an IP holder wishes to address is one of the cornerstones of the license management and compliance activity. The targeting strategy involves segmenting the market, choosing which segments of the market are appropriate, determining the goals to be reached and the initiative that will be executed in each segment. The success of a license management & compliance initiative starts with the targeting phase. We provide solutions to large companies that have a huge number of licensees and/or end-users typically scattered in different geographies. The adequate segmentation of the customer base, the profiling of potential targets and the selection of the most appropriate and potential targets from a commercial perspective is one of our best abilities.
Our global presence and multilingual capabilities allow us to provide a unique set of benefits to outsource the front office (customer facing) management & compliance activity. We can act as an extension of IP holders license compliance force, using its process, tools, methodologies and standards, quality and company philosophy. We address global license management and compliance activities from a local perspective, with highly qualified native speaking consultants. Our activity resources execution model is agile, efficient and scalable. Legal support.