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Function documentationGuided Activity for the Rights Availability Analysis

 

You use this function to create a rights availability request and perform the rights availability analysis.

Features

The rights availability analysis process is designed as a guided activity. The rights availability analysis wizard consists of the steps that you define in Customizing under:

Start of the navigation path Customer Relationship Management Next navigation step Industry-Specific Solutions Next navigation step Media Next navigation step Intellectual Property Management Next navigation step Rights Availability Analysis Next navigation step CRM WebClient UI Next navigation step Configure Rights Availability Wizard End of the navigation path.

Depending on the options you maintain in Customizing, the wizard prompts the user to enter the following types of information:

  • General request information

    You can enter the following:

    • Description

    • Business partner ID

    • Request ID

      Note Note

      You can enter a request ID number that falls within the external number range defined in Customizing. If you do not enter a request ID, the system assigns a request ID number from the internal number range for each new rights availability request.

      To define the internal and external number ranges, make the settings in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management under Start of the navigation path Industry-Specific Solutions Next navigation step Media Next navigation step Intellectual Property Management Next navigation step Rights Availability Analysis Next navigation step CRM WebClient UI Next navigation step Define Number Ranges for Rights Availability Requests End of the navigation path.

      End of the note.

  • Availability Criteria

    You can specify the criteria that the system takes into account during the availability calculation. You can specify the following options for the general request (GREQ) scenario:

    • One or more rights groups (can be entered using a rights template)

    • Start Date, End Date

    • Exclusive Rights

    • Transmissions

    • Availability Restrictions (This assignment block contains a number of indicators that you can use to influence the search for availability criteria). The example below shows one possible use of these indicators.

    Example Example

    When you enter rights criteria for availability, you search for available rights in for the TV market, DE territory and DE or FR languages. If you enter two or more elements in a single rights dimension, an Or logical relationship exists between these elements. If you want to search for both the DE and FR languages, select the Language: All Rights Required indicator. This creates an And logical relationship between these languages. You can also specify availability restrictions to change criteria rarely used in the analysis.

    End of the example.

  • IP Selection

    You can specify the criteria to search for and select the IPs you want to analyze in the rights availability calculations. You can select IPs directly from the IP master data or by searching existing contracts for IPs. If you want to find IPs in contracts, you can specify contract-specific selection attributes. These can include, for example, the following:

    • Contract status specified in the contract (In Negotiation, To Be Checked Internally, Completed)

      Note Note

      This differs from the system status for the contract that the system can consider in the rights availability calculation. For more information, see Features in Rights Availability Analysis.

      End of the note.

    • Transaction type

    • Sales contract or acquisition contract

    • Licensee or licensor

      Note Note

      If you select Sales Contract, you can enter the licensee. If you select Acquisition Contract, you can enter the licensor.

      End of the note.

    • Contract ID

    • ID of the employee responsible for the contract

    You can also restrict the search based on contract-specific or IP-specific criteria. For example, you can search in the contracts of Licensee X or Licensor Y for IPs that contain the word “Ring” in the description.

    Rights Criteria

    Rights criteria are used to search using attributes in the IP master. You can decide which rights type (such as Rights Own, Release Dates, Release Restrictions) you want to observe here.

    Manual Mode:

    • If you do not specify any rights criteria by choosing Clear, the search is not restricted using rights criteria. This allows you to include IPs that do not (yet) have any rights in the search.

    • By choosing Enter Rights Separately, you switch from the automatic mode to manual mode and can modify the rights for the search and search for IPs with different rights to those you entered in the Availability Criteria step.

    Automatic Mode:

    • By choosing Use Rights from Availability Criteria, you can switch to automatic mode where you select IPs according to the rights you specified in the Availability Criteria step.

    You can specify whether the automatic or manual mode is used as a default mode for each availability scenario in the Define Rights Availability Scenarios Customizing activity.

  • Availability

    You can display the rights availability data for specific IPs. You see the rights available for sale or transfer in a hierarchical structure. After you execute the calculation, you see a status icon beside the IPs to indicate the rights availability. For example, a green status icon indicates that the requested rights for the IP are available, while a red status icon indicates that they are not available. You also see a list of detail statuses for each IP in the hierarchy, showing sets of existing or missing rights. These sets are called detail statuses. The following detail statuses (the mnemonics that are displayed on the overview are listed in brackets) are available from the Availability Details view:

    • Acquisition Contracts (ACQR): Acquisition contracts that are relevant for the available rights

    • Available Rights (no mnemonic): Available rights for the IP taking account of the availability of the subordinate IPs in the IP hierarchy

    • Available Rights for Current IP (IAVL): Available rights for the current IP without taking account of the availability of any subordinate IP

    • Missing Rights (no mnemonic): Missing rights of the IP taking account of the missing rights of subordinate IPs in the IP hierarchy

    • Missing Rights for Current IP (IMIS) Missing rights of the current IP not taking account of the missing rights of any subordinate IP

    • Not Owned Rights (NOWN): Rights that are unavailable because the rights are not owned

    • Unreleased Rights (NREL): Rights that are unavailable because they have not been released in the IP master

    • Sold Rights (SOLD): All license sales contracts that are relevant for availability according to the requested rights

    • Holdback Rights (HRIG): Rights that are unavailable for licensing because they have already been granted as a holdback in a license sales contract

    • Restricted Rights (RRES): Rights which are unavailable because they have been restricted in the IP master

Sub-IP-Conflict

If this indicator is set for an IP on the Availability Overview, any subordinate IP contributes to the missing rights. To obtain complete information about the availability situation, you can analyze the status of the subordinate IPs on the Availability Details screen.

Current IP / Combined IPs

These buttons are available in the assignment blocks Available Rights and Missing Rights. Choose Current IP if you want to view the rights which are relevant only to the current IP without taking account of any subordinate IP. Choose Combined IPs if you are interested in the aggregated rights throughout the IP hierarchy taking account of all relevant subordinate IPs

You can save the requests with the availability results and the data you have entered in the various steps. However, the search result displayed in step “IP Search” is not saved with the request. Saving a request allows you to track the results executed on a specific date (and time) at a later stage. When saving a request, note that the system prompts you to enter a description for this request if you have not already done so above

Search, Select and Execute Options

The Search function allows you to make your selection manually. The Select/Deselect function is used to select the IPs in which you are interested from the search result. The Search and Execute function selects the IPs and executes the request. The Search and Execute in Background function selects the IPs in the background according to the selection criteria that you specify in this step before the request is executed. The new search result is combined with the list of IPs that have already been selected in the request before.

Saving the Rights Availability Request

You can save the requests with the availability results and the data you have entered in the various steps. However, the search result displayed in the IP Search step is not saved with the request. Saving a request allows you to track the results executed on a specific date (and time) at a later stage. When saving a request, note that the system prompts you to enter a description for this request if you have not already done so above.

To use this function, you must activate the business function Intellectual Property Management (CRM_IPM_1).

Contract Creation Based on Rights Availability Results

You can select one or more of the IPs displayed and create a license sales or license acquisition contract directly from the Availability step. The system copies the following to the new contract:

  • IP information

  • Available rights (when creating license sales contracts)

  • Requested rights (when creating license acquisition contracts)

You must specify the transaction type and the item group type with which the contract is to be created.

Note Note

The system administrator can configure the system to add new intellectual property (IP) search options based on set type attributes. For more information, see SAP Note 1026956.

End of the note.