New Essential Basics of Licensing

Available in Spring 2025

Licensing brands, characters, sports team names, college logos, and artwork, often called “merchandising,” has become a global business. While it may have begun as a fad, it has exploded into a worldwide retail industry worth $360+ billion. It generates more than $7 billion in annual royalty income for those property owners who are savvy enough to license their properties for various consumer products. About 13 years ago, we introduced the first Basics of Licensing book, intended to be an abbreviated handbook for licensors. Endorsed by the Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association (“LIMA”), now known as Licensing International (“LI”), the book was well received by the licensing industry. It was followed by a revised version a couple of years later, followed by “Licensee” and “International” editions and “Language of Licensing.”. Each edition was popular among licensing professionals and supported by LIMA.

Recognizing that there was a degree of overlap between these editions, coupled with the fact that the industry has expanded by leaps and bounds since the first Basics book, we concluded that it was time for the definitive work on licensing, hence, The Business of Licensing which combined and updated the best of all three prior editions and took the subject to the next level.

We are now returning, literally and figuratively, to the “basics” with this book, seeking to provide our readers with the essential licensing and a step-by-step guide for developing and implementing a licensing program. While several of these points can get complicated to explain and describe, we have tried to present them in an easy-to-read and understandable format. While the book is primarily directed to merchandise licensing, a/k/a “merchandising,” many issues and points are common to all types of intellectual property licensing, whether the licensed property is a patent, trademark, copyright, technology, or software. Thus, we guarantee that all licensing professionals will find many areas helpful and informative.

Readers of earlier editions may ask why they need this new edition. While, on its face, the book's layout is similar to earlier editions, many of the sections have been updated to address changes in the industry that have occurred in recent years. In addition, there are brand new sections that have become important for licensing professionals, e.g., data privacy, the impact of artificial intelligence, cyber-insurance issues, changes in legal issues impacting licensing, the emergence and importance of social media and how to control it, the impact of licensing on retailers in the face of consolidation and the emergence of on-line stores such as Amazon, and new and different royalty structures for various forms of licensing. We’ve also included a “Language of Licensing” section, a distilled version of our recently published book by the same name. While it remains a “Basics” book, it will prove helpful for both the beginner and experienced licensing professional.

We start by providing an updated merchandising history, including the properties that have made the industry famous and examples of unique licensed products. Many of the examples of licensed products are new. Unlike earlier versions of the Basics series, we have provided brief descriptions and illustrations of the various properties. We have also prepared an extensive PowerPoint presentation on merchandising history, which our readers can access online via a Dropbox link. We hope that our readers can use this Deck to make presentations of their own in their professional capacity.

Finally, we have again assembled an extensive collection of the forms that a licensing professional may need. These forms are updated over prior editions to reflect the evolving industry in an appendix that is available electronically via a link at the back of this book.

Available in Print ($29.95) and Kindle ($22.95) editions