I had the absolute pleasure of finally getting to see my childhood heroes, Kraftwerk, at the Green Man Festival in 2022. As a keyboard player and wannabe electronic artist at the time this came out, it took me a while to really appreciate that ‘less is more’ in any popular music. In so many ways they set the world of electronic music on its way and Computer World remains a brilliant piece of work, so it is great to be able to borrow one of their simplest lyrics to set this blog against.
“Business, Numbers, Money, People.”
When looking to summarise what a deal looks like, well it generally involves people, there is a business or service to be delivered, there is the money of course and yes we need to agree on how much and when, so the numbers.
I say this because my fear often with the law is that it can sometimes be distracted by a lot of peripheral matters which actually make no difference to the commercial outcome of a deal that is struck. I am not trying to belittle the centuries of erudition that the legal profession has laboured over instead, I would like to highlight a problem that often affects the outsider when trying to get a grip on how the law can support their business, art or occupation without requiring years of training, an IQ that escapes most of us and importantly a budget to pay a legion of lawyers who possess all of this and more.
Simply put, does every agreement have to be hard to understand? Difficult to interpret? Impossible to enforce without significant cost?
Of course not and indeed there is a very wide range of complexity accommodated within the legal world. However, for us at Springer, we are directing our work at a customer base that needs legal agreements to secure their creative work and the services provided to help deliver this alongside those that offer a return for any investors in it. So people. Money, numbers and a business transaction. A top priority has to be that all of this is affordable and by affordable I am not talking about £100s or £1,000s per contract but a fraction of that for multiple agreements.
Let’s focus for a moment on how we can deliver the same simplicity that Kraftwerk showed in producing a timeless classic to the world of legal contracts.
A primary consideration in any of our RevShare transactions is that this is about sharing revenues and not copyrights. So if this is the case, the definition of what the revenue is and who owns it is the basic information the contract requires. Our philosophy has been in part to provide a document that formalises the favour culture that has existed in the creative space for many years. If the revenue owner is going to pay for some service, product or other by paying in part from future revenues, then this needs to be established to the satisfaction of the service provider. It’s more than a handshake and something that will stand up in a court of law if needed.
Now with this type of agreement, the requirements for the necessary legal commitments are relatively easy to draft to make binding on all parties. No drama, a series of non-complex clauses and commercial data that reflects the agreement.
I can hear some tutting going on but in reality, in the many discussions I have had with lawyers about our approach and the agreements we generate, there is general agreement that they do the job. Critically they address a problem that many legal practices face in how to make a return out of these entry-level agreements. Most accept they are often loss leaders which may or may not result in more profitable work in the future.
Anyway, we have a lot of new product developments to discuss later this year, including our increasing use of emerging technologies in creating and managing the agreements.
Ahead of this, it is probably a good moment to consider the role of some of these technologies, their value and their risk as we work towards providing a legal environment which is both effective and affordable to the creators of the future
So until next time when we consider whether the system only dreams in total darkness.
