Page 42 - AeM_June_2018

COMPANIES & CAMPAIGNS

EY and Microsoft launch blockchain solution for

content rights and royalties’ management

Ernest & Young (EY) and Microsoft launched a The embedded smart contract architecture enables on
blockchain solution for content rights and royalties’ top accurate and real-time calculation of each
management that aims to streamline costly and time- participant’s royalty position, provides enhanced
consuming processes significantly involved. Their visibility for recording and reconciles royalty
solution has been designed to serve any industry where transactions. The underlying network is built using the
intellectual property or assets are licensed to other Quorum blockchain protocol and Microsoft’s Azure
parties and where the creators are paid royalties based cloud infrastructure and blockchain technologies that
on royalty agreements. implements confidentiality of agreements across
entities.
Within this value chain – which can include authors, song
writers, production houses, developers and more -- the Microsoft’s gaming partners participating on the
intellectual property generates millions of transactions network will get improved visibility to the transactions
aggregating to billions of dollars per month in royalties to versus the legacy process, which could take up to 45
be paid. The royalty calculations along the value chain days or more, and will be able to generate accounting
are currently mostly manual and generally managed via accruals daily which they can use to improve their
offline data sources. The new rights and royalties’ forecasting.
management solution however, manages to increase
trust and transparency between industry players, besides Right now, the solution is tested by some that embrace
significantly reducing operational inefficiencies and the opportunity to collaborate with EY and Microsoft on
eliminating the need for costly manual reconciliation and blockchain use cases in the domain of digital contracts
partner reviews in the rights and royalties’ management and royalties. But when fully operational, this
process. In addition, the solution aims to provide near blockchain network is expected to encompass
real-time visibility of sales transactions to the participants thousands of Microsoft royalty partners and process
in the blockchain network and to help the participants to millions of transactions per day, making it one of the
react to market needs faster and more effectively world’s largest enterprise blockchain ecosystems.◊
because they will get timely, improved insights into the
content that is being purchased. By Daniela La Marca

42 June 2018 - Mobile & Video Marketing