Video clips for mobile

The exciting and rapid growth of TV and video within the mobile content industry is giving rise to some very significant intellectual property rights issues.

Leaving aside streaming television, the main area is video clips for mobiles. Many mobile content providers are actively seeking rights.

There are two main types of potential content - footage that has already been broadcast on television and footage that has not.

Among content providers, famous TV comedy series are the most popular genre. To secure the mobile rights is complicated, because there are so many rights owners potentially involved. And none of them foresaw the mobile content revolution when they made their telly shows.

For example, “Only Fools And Horses” is probably the UK’s favourite comedy series of all time, containing some of the most-loved comedy moments.

To get the mobile rights to those scenes where Del Boy falls through the bar or the chandelier falls into the next room, who needs to give you a contract?

The scriptwriter John Sullivan? The broadcaster the BBC? The ‘talent’ David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst? The composer of the theme and incidental music? Anyone else?

Nobody knows yet and they are all talking about how to resolve it.

This is encouraging content providers to pursue rights that are cleaner, quicker and easier to secure. In particular, new productions that are made with the mobile phone in mind.

In response, a worldwide army of talented animators and film-makers is emerging, focussed on the needs of the mobile platform and its users.

They are delighted to have their work exposed to a broader public. Therefore, dealing with them is a lot quicker and easier than dealing with proven ‘old media’ people.

An early example is ‘”Cat Bastard”, licensed to Cyoshi Mobile by the creator and featuring funny and bloody 20 second animated clips. A modern day “Road Runner and Wiley Coyote”, except the cat always kills the dog.
It will not be long before the tables turn and television companies start coming to the mobile content industry, seeking the rights to make TV shows featuring characters made popular on mobile.