ROYALTY REVIEW COUNCIL ASSEMBLES TEAM OF ROYALTY AUDITORS & PROGRAMMERS TO REVIEW ON-LINE USE & SALE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
LOS ANGELES, CA (March 11, 1999) – Keith Bernstein, formerly the Director of Financial Operations and Royalty Audits for PolyGram/A&M Records, Inc., has launched Royalty Review Council.
Bernstein’s Royalty Review Council is the first known company to assemble a team of a record executive, experienced royalty auditors and system e-commerce programmers to review the integrity of the sales reports issued by online merchants engaged in the distribution or use of intellectual property (e.g., copyrights, record masters, videos, trademarks, software, etc.).
Royalty Review Council has also developed a proprietary royalty accounting system that is integrated with e-commerce programs to calculate royalties for products delivered or sold online. Information from online transactions will be transmitted electronically at the moment of purchase to Royalty Review Council for quarterly royalty calculation and statement reporting.
Bernstein has created the first set of procedures to determine the amount of unreported and/or underreported royalties generated from the licensing of and/or illegal use of intellectual property distributed in digital format on the Internet and/or sold by web sites and shipped in traditional formats.
Until now, no one has developed the procedures to audit the data of a web based file server to determine the validity of sales being reported or the number of sales unreported by the web sites distributing intellectual property.
Royalty Review Council’s combined experience in record company finance, auditing and e-commerce market basket technology gives them a unique “whole picture” perspective on royalty provisions of contracts and the calculation of royalties for online sales.
In his role as Director of Financial Operations and Royalty Audits for PolyGram/A&M Records, Inc., Bernstein directed all royalty participant audits of A&M, including negotiation and settlement of audit claims. In addition, he analyzed proposed financial terms of contracts and prepared hundreds of royalty contract briefs for all forms of agreements, including those for recording artists, producers, engineers, soundtracks, joint venture and third party label distribution. Prior to A&M, Bernstein was employed by the investment banking firm of Houlihan, Lokey Howard & Zukin and the management consulting division of BDO Seidman, LLP.
Bernstein commented, “The music industry is buzzing about the challenge to supply a pirate-proof music format over the Internet. Companies who use our system will have the ability to generate a royalty accounting statement for licensed Internet sales, regardless of the format used. Our system is unobtrusive to the operation of a web site, and it reports both actual sales and promotional distributions.”