License Acquisition Contract
The license acquisition contract represents agreements that you make with various licensors about the type and scope of rights and services they transfer, which are restricted by time and content. You define the royalties amount (outgoing royalties) that you are to pay the licensor.
License acquisition contracts are based on the business transaction concept. The business transaction category for license acquisition defines the commercial context in which a transaction type or item category can be used.
You can define and associate them with transaction types to control how the contract displays and the type of information the user enters. The following are the main transaction types available to you for representing the acquisition of rights and services:
Transaction Type |
Use |
|---|---|
Rights acquisition contract |
Describes the acquisition of rights to an Intellectual Property (IP).
You acquire the right to make a film based on a book from the author of this book. End of the example. |
Service acquisition contract |
Describes the obligations of a service provider. The service provider does not generally own rights to the IP, but can have an involvement in license revenues.
You commit an actor to produce a film. End of the example. |
ExampleLicense acquisition contracts represent the acquisition of rights or services to an Intellectual Property (IP). Dates
in the license contract describe the restriction of the right or service sold with regard to time. You restrict the content using the rights maintenance function. Payment to the contract partner can be dependent on the exploitation success of the IP for both types of acquisition contract. This type of remuneration is entered in the Royalties
Rates
assignment block as a new royalty. The technical object in the system is referred to as a price agreement. When you enter the new royalty, you can also use the advance
reference to record an advance amount or minimum guarantee to be recouped against a royalty.
Payments to be made to the contract partner can be defined as a single fixed fee, which you enter in the Royalties Rates
assignment block as a new flat fee. The technical object in the system for a flat fee is referred to as a condition.
Structure
By making Customizing settings for the business transaction, you can structure license acquisition contracts so that they meet your requirements.
To use the full range of functions for license acquisition contracts, you must first make the Customizing settings for business transactions according to the requirements of your company.
More detailed information on the configuration settings for license acquisition contracts is available in the Intellectual Property Management business scenarios in SAP Solution Manager
.
Divide your license acquisition contract into main
and sub-items
according to the business transaction to be represented in the system.
Note
You can define any number of sub-items for license contract main items.
You can also maintain rights within the contract. Rights scopes define the rights and period for which an Intellectual Property is transferred from the licensor to the licensee for rights usage. Royalties scopes or rights and royalties scopes define the basis on which royalties are calculated.
Common acquisition contract scenarios are:
Integration
When the items are released and the contract is saved, the transaction is transferred to billing.
Once the billing document has been saved, the following information is written to the license acquisition contract:
Document flow (at header and item level; the billing document is the successor to the license acquisition contract header or item)
System status
billed
(at item level)Billed value (at item level)
Pricing Procedure for Billing
You can specify the pricing procedure in the Royalties Attributes
assignment block of a rights and royalties or royalties scope. The pricing procedure is used to calculate the outgoing royalties in the billing document. If you do not make any entries in the contract,
the pricing procedure specified in the billing type is used in the billing document.
Note
This function is only available if you have activated the feature IPMPRIPROC in the Billing Engine application for outgoing royalties.
Data Archiving
Data archiving is available for license contracts in SAP CRM. After the contract is archived, you can still search for and display the contract. You cannot, however, edit an archived contract. For more information, see Data Archiving and Archiving of Business Transactions.
Note
For an accessible version of contract archiving using Archive Administration
(transaction SARA), you must first run the report BTC_SWITCH_LIST_GRID
and change the system setting to GRID Display
.