👥 Grouping Module

The Grouping Module enables the creation and management of group IP Assets, supporting a royalty pool for the group.

GroupingModule.sol

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Contract

View the smart contract here.

GroupingModule.sol is the main entry point for the grouping workflows. It is stateless and responsible for:

• Registering a new group
• Adding an IPA to a group
• Removing an IPA from a group
• Checking whether a group contains a specific IPA
• Get total number of IPAs of a group

Creating a Group IPA

Similar to the IP Asset registration process, in which you must have a minted NFT to register and then an IP Account is created, the same applies to Group IP Assets. You must have a minted ERC-721 NFT (that represents the ownership of the group) to register as a group, and then when you register, an IP Account for the group is deployed.

Anyone can create a new group.

Group IP Asset Registry

Similar to how when an IP Asset is created an IP Account is deployed & registered through the IP Asset Registry, the Group's IP Account is deployed and registered through the Group IP Asset Registry. This is responsible for managing the registration and tracking of Group IP Assets, including the group members and reward pools.

The Group's IP Account

The Group IP Account should function equivalently to a normal IP Account, allowing attachment of license terms, creation of derivatives, execution with modules, and other interactions. It also has the same common interface of IP Account. Hence, the Group IP Account can be applied to anywhere where IP Account can be applied.

Besides the common interfaces of IP Account, the Group IP Account has functions to manage the adding/removing of individual IPAs in the group.

Adding & Removing from a Group

Only the owner of a group can add/remove IP Assets or other groups to it. You do not have to own an IP Asset or group to add them to your group.

Conditions to Add to a Group

There are a few conditions an IP Asset (or other group) must meet to be added into a group:

1. The minting fee of that IP Asset or other group must be set to 0
2. It must have the same license terms of the group it is trying to join or no license terms at all. It can also have other license terms attached, as long as one of them is the same.

Groups Becoming Locked

There are a few cases in which a group becomes "locked", meaning you can't add/remove any more members:

• once the group receives any type of payment
• if a derivative is linked to the group (in other words, the group becomes a parent IP)

If any of these happen, you must create a new group if you wish to add/remove members.

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Example

Lets say you have an AI bot that uses training data to continuously learn and produce better content. The training data is a Group IPA that is the root, and the AI bot is a derivative IPA of the training data. And any time the AI bot gets paid, the revenue flows back to the training data as revenue.

Now you want to add more training data to the group. Since the group is now locked (you linked a derivative to it), you should register a new Group IPA as a root, and then a new AI bot as a derivative.