Best Practices for Commissioning Royalty Audits

About the Course:

You spent years and millions of dollars conducting research. You demonstrated tenacity during the prosecution of your patents. After long negotiations you closed a licensing agreement with a commercializer. You were patient while the licensee ramped up production. Royalties are finally due but your royalty statements look light. What can you do? Hire a royalty auditor to ensure you are being remitted the royalties that are rightfully yours.

This invaluable session walks listeners through the royalty auditing continuum—ranging from negotiating royalty provisions in licensing agreements to collecting delinquent royalties from licensees after sending them royalty audit reports. Matthew Hurewitz shares war stories collected from his more than 25 years of experience conducting royalty audits. The following are among the issues discussed:

• Staffing a royalty auditing team.
• Setting triggers for requiring licensees to pay for royalty audits based on the extent of underpayment.
• Differences between desk audits and full royalty audits.
• Conducting royalty audits in view of objection periods and document retention periods.
• Common causes of unreported and underreported royalties.
• Red flags for unreported and underreported royalties.
• Discoverability and privilege issues with respect to communications between licensors and royalty auditors.
• Risks of deferring royalty audits.
• The extent to which patent marking facilitates royalty audits.
• The definition of “net negative sales” and how to deal with the issue.
• Contending with licensees that rebuff royalty auditors.
• Differences in auditing royalty agreements than hinge on revenues versus units.
• Risks of royalty auditors divulging too much knowledge of licensees to licensors.
• Duties (or lack thereof) for royalty auditors informing licensors of overpayments remitted by licensees.

Course Leaders: Matthew A. Hurewitz, CPA, President, Hurewitz And Company

Over the course of his career, Matthew Hurewitz has garnered more than 25 years of experience in Royalty and Participation Compliance Auditing. The audit and litigation forensic work in which he has been involved has uncovered more than $50 million in claims. Matthew’s specialties include litigation support and expert witness testimony. He has audited in music, film/tv, technology and other industries throughout the US and around the world, including Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, France, Germany, Italy, UK, Australia, Canada and Mexico.

Since 2013, Matthew has been the President of Hurewitz And Company, and prior to that, he was managing partner of Hurewitz, Boschan & Co. LLP for four years and spent 14 years at Wolinsky, Becker & Hurewitz, LLP (originally Wolinsky & Co.), four years at Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman, a division of Coopers and Lybrand, and two years at Ernst & Young.

Course Length: Approx. 1.5 hours

$295.00 PER USER