A few weeks ago, at the Special Libraries Association conference in Baltimore, I had the chance to sit down with Bill Burger, VP Marketing at Copyright Clearance Center, for a demo of their new Rightsphere™ product.
Rightsphere™ brings Copyright Clearance Center to the user side of content rights. Rightsphere™ is a licensing management platform that allows companies to promote collaboration, while ensuring compliance with copyrights and license terms.
Here are the highlights from my discussion with Bill:
Content Matters (“CM”): Tell me about Rightsphere.
Burger: Rightsphere sets out to inject some clarity into the complex web of licenses and content agreements that companies have with publishers and information providers. It does this by providing a simple answer to a common question people have in a lot of work environments: "What can I do with this content?" The answer to that question often lies buried somewhere among the stacks of agreements companies negotiate with providers and getting the correct answer at the right time is exceedingly difficult in most companies. That's the problem Rightsphere addresses
CM: CCC has previously focused its efforts on publishers. What were the drivers
in moving to the client side?
Burger: We've always been client focused when it came to creating new licensing structures and services that expanded the ways people could use content in the corporate or academic markets. But from the standpoint of creating technology-driven services for content uses, and perhaps this is what you were getting at, I think it's fair to say that Rightsphere breaks new ground. Our only other comparable product is Rightslink, which is a service aimed at publishers that enables them to offer a host of licensing and reprint services to people reading their content online. As to why we invested as we did in Rightsphere, the answer is really very simple: our clients needed help. They told us they had trouble managing their various licenses and that it was next to impossible to keep track of all of the rights they had bought through the multitude of agreements they had negotiated. In essence, they told us that for all the value they placed on our licenses, we still had more work to do to reduce the friction that was holding back the flow of content.
CM: The value proposition for Rightsphere has both the carrot and the stick - customers can avoid copyright violations, while also getting more value out of the content they license. Which of these two areas seems to be the driver for your initial interest, avoiding litigation or collaboration?
Burger: Absolutely that latter. One of the things we found during our market research was that a number of our customers don't fully appreciate or realize the value of the licenses they buy from us or any number of content providers they work with. The reason was that they had no way to let their employees know what rights they had because it was just too hard to convey. So what did they do? In some cases they erred on side of caution and issued strict policies against sharing content--even when one or more of their agreements would have allowed it. So much for collaboration in a situation like that. Rightsphere addresses that problem directly by making it possible for everyone in a company to see what rights they have.
CM: What is the typical ramp-up time for getting all of the content license information loaded into Rightsphere?
Burger: We expect that in most cases it will take a few weeks, but there are a number of factors to consider. First is how many different content agreements a company has. Second is the degree to which a company has centralized the management and tracking of its agreements. If they know what they have it will help speed the process. But it's worth keeping in mind that a considerable amount of value will be realized just by the fact that Rightsphere will immediately show the rights a company has through its CCC agreements, so even from Day 1 there's a real benefit.
CM: Your initial beta clients are both in the pharmaceutical market. What other markets have expressed interest in Rightsphere?
Burger: We've done a tremendous amount of market research on this question and one of the findings that gives us confidence about the product is how widespread the interest is. Broadly speaking, we saw that industries that face some level of regulation, that use content intensively in their business and that place a premium on innovation, speed to market and collaboration all expressed a real interest in the concept. In addition to pharmaceutical and related firms, that would include financial firms, the energy sector, chemicals, telecommunications and other technology-centric markets.
CM: Based upon the initial feedback from users, what might you be adding in upcoming releases?
Burger: Our customers most definitely will be guiding us and Rightsphere will be a product that is always improving. At this stage it's probably too early to tell what new features will end of at the top of the to-do list for future releases, but I think it's safe to say that you'll see us looking to add new types of uses to the list of licensing options we offer. We'll also be working hard to improve the commerce experience for our customers. And some new features will, I'm sure, key off the content needs of new sectors as they come on board.
For more coverage of Rightsphere, take a look at John Blossom’s analysis, InfoToday and the July issue of eContent.
Posted by: |