When registering your IP on Story, you can attach License Terms to the IP. These are real, legally binding terms enforced on-chain by the 📜 Licensing Module, disputable by the ❌ Dispute Module, and in the worst case, able to be enforced off-chain in court through traditional means.

In them are also terms for commercial usage, which describes how the 💸 Royalty Module will be enforced (ex. “50% of revenue must be shared with the parent IP”).

Example License Terms

View some popular combinations of PIL License Terms, also known as “flavors”.

More specifically, License Terms are a particular combination of values from a License Template. Indeed, there can and will exist multiple License Terms (variations) for each License Template. You can imagine that a License Template generates many License Term variations.

Once registered, License Terms are immutable — they can’t be tampered with or altered, even by the License Template that generated it.

Additionally, License Terms have a unique numeric ID within the License Template they stem from. This makes License Terms reusable, meaning if someone creates License Terms with a specific set of values, it only needs to be created once and can be used by anyone else.

For example, a particular set of term values of the Programmable IP License (PIL💊), such as non-commercial usage + derivatives allowed + free minting, defines a unique License Terms with an associated ID.

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License Terms Attached to IP Asset

The owner of a root IP Asset can attach License Terms to signal to other users that they can mint License Tokens of those terms to create a derivative of this IP Asset. Once License Terms are attached to an IP Asset, it is now considered “public” and anyone can mint a License Token using those terms.

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Inherited License Terms

On the other hand, derivative IP Assets inherit their License Terms from the parent IP Asset. This means that when an IP Asset registers itself as a derivative, it burns the License Token and inherits the associated License Terms. The owner of this derivative cannot set new License Terms.

You may be wondering: “if I cannot set new License Terms on my derivative, does that also mean I can’t change the minting fee, or disallowing more derivatives, on my derivative?”

Thankfully, there is a way to get around this! Although you cannot change License Terms on a derivative IP, you can utilize the License Config to implement special behaviors.

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Expiration

License Terms support an expiration time. Once License Terms expire, any derivatives that abide by that license will no longer be able to generate revenue or create further derivatives. If an IP Asset is a derivative of multiple parents, it will expire when the soonest expiration time between the two parents is reached.