Merchandising Rights
From ForcaWiki, the simple encyclopedia
| In one sentence | The right to sell physical products, like toys and t-shirts, that use a movie's trademarks or copyrighted characters. |
|---|---|
| Category | Film and Television |
| Related | Ancillary Rights, Intellectual Property (IP) |
Imagine a store wants to sell t-shirts printed with your invented comic book character. Before they can legally do that, they need your permission, since the character belongs to you.
Merchandising rights are exactly that permission for a movie: the right to sell tangible, physical property, like games and t-shirts, that use a film's trademarks or copyrighted characters. Merchandising rights are one specific category within a movie's broader Ancillary Rights.
Fun facts
- Merchandising rights include video game rights, which is why a hit movie so often gets its own tie-in video game.
- A studio can earn an enormous amount of money from merchandising rights alone, sometimes even more than the movie made in theaters.
- Merchandising rights only work because the studio actually owns the intellectual property behind the characters in the first place.