Through LICENSING, legally protected brands, characters and other intellectual properties can be made available for use on products, in marketing and other business activities. Characters from popular culture have been used for commercial sales purposes for more than 120 years and the market has exploded during the last decades. Today, licensed products have a yearly turnover of more than $172 billion in retail sales worldwide, according to the trade organization Licensing Industry Merchandisers' Association (LIMA).

HOW IS IT DONE?

1. Plus Licens

Take a look at the "Properties and rights" section of our site, or contact us, to find out what we can offer.

2. Deal proposal form

After jointly discussing the outlines and agreeing about the contractual terms, we send the licensor a formal contract proposal with the following main points:
• Name and contact details
• Company information (for new licensees)
• Property (character, brand etc.)
• Product/activity description
• Territory
• Term of agreement
• Royalty and sales estimation/projection
• Amount to be paid in advance and/or minimum guarantee

3. Contract

When the licensor has accepted the contract terms, a contract is issued and sent to you for signature. The signed contracts are returned to Plus Licens, who forwards them to the licensor for counter-signature. Thereafter you receive a copy for your files.

4. Product development, approval and production

The licensor usually gives the licensee access to an official styleguide/artbank with guidelines, illustrations and design elements (often available online). To protect the goodwill of their character/property, the licensor reserves the right to approve your use and to control that the character/property is used correctly. All products, advertising, campaign materials etc. must include the official copyright line for the property and are subject to the licensor's written approval before production.

5. Sell-off period

After the expiration of a licensing agreement, remaining items of a licensed product may be sold off for a period of 60-90 days, as per stipulations in the contract.

WHAT DOES IT COST?

1. Royalty

The cost for use of a character/property is paid in the form of royalty.

• For merchandising – the use of a character/property on a product – the royalty rate is computed on the product's wholesale price. The royalty rate is considerably lower for products with large sales, e.g. everyday commodities.
• For publishing, the royalty rate is computed on the retail price less value-added tax.
• For promotion - the use of a character/property in advertising, commercials etc. - the cost amounts to about 10% of the media purchase cost (advertisements, outdoor advertising, commercials) and about 20% of the printing cost for printed matter (direct mail advertising, catalogues etc.). The royalty is paid as a single sum in connection with the signing of the contract.

2. Advance / guarantee amount
The entrance fee for using the character/property as agreed is a royalty pre-payment upon signing of the contract. Licensees are often also obliged to pay a minimum guarantee royalty for the contract period. Upcoming royalty fee is deducted from the prepaid amount, which is not repayable. When initial production costs are extremely high, we agree upon a lower pre-payment rate and a guarantee amount which is charged later on within the contract period.

3. Royalty report
The royalty shall be accounted for and paid to Plus Licens quarterly; no later than 15 days after the end of each calendar quarter.