Licensing & Rights Management

Licensing in Japan moves through a tight network of collecting societies and rights holders.

Our team works each day with JASRAC for musical works and NexTone for newer catalogues. We also deal with the major labels in Tokyo's Roppongi and Aoyama corridors. We clear sync, master, and performance rights under the Copyright Act of Japan (chosakuken-ho). Archive footage clears through NHK Archives, Toei, Shochiku, and regional TV networks in Osaka and Nagoya. UniJapan opens doors where co-production treaties shape the deal.

Beyond music and footage, we handle script and book-adaptation rights. Our team also leads character licensing with Tokyo publishers and trademark clearance for brand-visible sites. We liaise on talent likeness across Japanese agencies too.

Release deals are agreed for local theatrical, NHK and commercial broadcast, streaming, and area-by-area global release. Our IP lawyers watch how the work is used after launch. They line up royalty collection across borders. They answer any misuse through Japan's enforcement channels. That work has lifted revenue by an average of thirty per cent on the licensing slate for the shoots we manage.

Territory work is where many Japanese deals get tricky. A song cleared for a TBS broadcast slot may not cover Netflix Japan or a global streaming window. We split rights by platform and region from the outset. Where a co-production treaty shapes the title, we align the chain of title with each partner's home rules. That keeps a buyer in one market from blocking release in another later on.

Clean records carry the whole effort. Our team logs every licence, term, and renewal date in one rights ledger built for the shoot. We hand that file to the post house, the distributor, and the legal team in a shared, plain format. Delivery to platforms like Netflix Japan asks for full clearance proof, so the ledger maps to each requirement. Nothing ships until every line is signed off.