Rights Tracker Seeks European, North American Expansion

LONDON, July 11: Ross Bentley, the managing director of
Rights Tracker, tells World Screen Newsflash about the company’s ambitions to
take its web-based rights management software into key European markets and
into the U.S.

Since formally launching last December, the London-based
outfit has notched up a number of clients, among them National Geographic
Television International, Cineflix International Distribution, Parthenon Entertainment
and, most recently, Bullseye Television. The Rights Tracker software allows
distributors to access information on what rights are still available for
particular titles. It also facilitates sales contracts, producer reports, and
screener requests, all from a web-based interface that can be accessed from
anywhere in the world.

Bentley, a former Granada International and ITEL executive,
began developing the software in 2002 with Richard Warr, a software developer.
“I’m not a technological person at all,” Bentley says, “I’m really quite
IT-phobic in a way. But I knew the systems we used in terms of rights
management and producer reporting and market reporting really didn’t work. They
were incredibly slow or so complicated that people were scared of using them. I
said, there’s got to be a market out there for software that isn’t ridiculously
expensive and that does work and is quick.”

Bentley believes he’s found that market and the timing, he
notes, couldn’t be better, with British production companies now taking more
control of their intellectual property rights, and new distribution platforms
opening up worldwide. “With the onset of new digital media, selling programming
is much more complicated,” he notes. “You can do so many more window deals. Its
fantastic news, but unless you’ve got a system that can show what those
availabilities are, you’re stuck really.”

Going forward, Rights Tracker aims to consolidate its
position in the U.K. and then sign on clients in key European markets and in
the U.S. “We’ve got two or three companies in the States on the verge of
acquiring it,” Bentley says. “That market is very important to us. The plan is
to have a satellite office in New York.” Asia and Australia, Bentley says, will
follow in due course.