How IP protection impacts
your sector.
Stories, case studies, and reflections for creatives who want to stop giving their work away unprotected.
The Pixar case
Jobs bought Pixar for $5M. Disney bought it for $7,400M. The difference: registering your own IP vs. doing work for others.
What Keith Haring knew that Basquiat didn't
Keith Haring registered his work compulsively. Basquiat didn't. One left behind a foundation; the other, a legal battle that's still open.
She donated her photos to the world. Getty charged for them.
Carol Highsmith donated 100,000 photos to the Library of Congress. Getty indexed them and started charging. She received an invoice for using her own work.
He sold it for $900. The collector made $85,000.
Rauschenberg confronted Scull at Sotheby's in 1973. Scull resold the work for 94× the price. The artist received nothing. That moment triggered the first U.S. law on resale license payments.
They sold it for $130. It was worth billions.
Siegel and Shuster sold Superman to DC Comics for $130 in 1938. They spent the rest of their lives in poverty. The contrast: Schulz kept the Snoopy licenses, and his estate makes $40M a year.
He registered a color. And the color is his.
Christian Louboutin registered Pantone 18-1663 TP as a color trademark in 1992. After decades of litigation against YSL, the court confirmed it. One color. Registered. His.
The director who charged less to win everything
George Lucas negotiated a lower salary in exchange for keeping the Star Wars merchandising. Fox agreed. Disney paid $4,050M for Lucasfilm in 2012.
The rights nobody wanted. They were worth everything.
J.K. Rowling kept the digital rights to Harry Potter because nobody was asking for them. That decision made her the first billionaire author in history.
He didn't patent a building. He patented what makes it possible.
Santiago Calatrava patents the structural solutions behind his forms. When other builders use his principles, they pay license fees.
Never sold. Never bought.
Pentagram is the most influential design studio in the world — and it has never been sold or acquired. The partners own it. No holding company touches its IP.
He recorded the world's voices. The archive is the asset.
Moses Asch founded Folkways Records in 1948 to capture masters of folk and indigenous music. Today the Smithsonian manages that catalog of 40,000 tracks under license.
5,127 prototypes. 15 years. And he nearly lost everything by showing it.
James Dyson showed his cyclonic vacuum to Hoover without the full patent in place. Hoover copied it. Dyson sued and won — but the lawsuit nearly destroyed his fledgling company.
The studio that refused to sell its films
A24 kept the IP on every film it produces. Moonlight, Everything Everywhere — A24 owns them. Valued at $2,500M on the strength of its catalog.
Every night Phantom runs, Lloyd Webber gets paid.
Andrew Lloyd Webber founded Really Useful Group in 1977 to keep the IP on his works. Phantom has been running for more than 35 years. Every night: usage-rights payments under contract.
Her masters were sold without telling her. She re-recorded them.
Taylor Swift lost ownership of her first six albums when her label sold them without her consent. Her response: re-record all of them.
How to register digital art (and prove it's yours)
Berne, Indautor ($367 MXN), U.S. Copyright Office (US$45–65), decentralized registration from $1 USD: what the law says and how to get a verifiable certificate today.