The Future and the IP of Intangibles

For those that don’t know him, Max Cooper’s projects don’t simply “pair” music with visuals; they fuse them to create entirely new, multi-layered IP ecosystems.

“Symphony in Acid’ was developed with Ksawery Komputery, the creative practice of Polish artist and designer Ksawery Kirklewski, whose work sits at the intersection of digital art, generative systems and immersive environments.

Philosophical text from Wittgenstein’s 1921 work on language, logic and metaphysics, ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’ is transformed into generative typography that evolves in lockstep with the music. (Combined loves: type and music.)

The output wasn’t just a music video, but an interactive website and a live experience ( symphonyinacid.net )

From an IP perspective, you are suddenly dealing with a complex web of overlapping rights: underlying musical compositions, sound recordings, films and visual assets, software source code, interface designs and, potentially, copyright or database rights in collections of data .

When it comes to exploitation, the commercial and legal questions multiply rapidly…

If a third party wants a licence, what exactly are you licensing?

• The master recording and composition?
• The moving visual work?
• The underlying generative software code?
• The interactive user experience?

And before asking what you’re licensing comes an even more basic question: do you own all of the rights needed to grant that licence? A project assembled from music, commissioned visuals, software, third-party text and interactive technology can have half a dozen contributors and several different chains of title.

The Rise of a Digital Existence

We are seeing these exact questions play out daily across video games, immersive entertainment, AI-generated content, and digital twins.

One of the earliest major US patent decisions involving video games came way back in 1988 when the US Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favour of Magnavox against Activision in a dispute over the pioneering “ball and paddle” patents developed for its Odyssey system. The patents had been drafted broadly enough that they weren’t limited to the original hardware. As gaming technology evolved from analogue circuitry to digital systems, the court found that newer implementations could still fall within the scope of the underlying invention.

In 2014, ZeniMax Media sued Oculus over the technology behind the Oculus Rift, alleging, among other things, trade secret misappropriation, copyright infringement and breaches of confidentiality obligations. ZeniMax ultimately succeeded on copyright and NDA-related claims, although the jury rejected its allegation that Oculus had misappropriated its trade secrets.

Immersive entertainment, VR (virtual reality), MR (mixed reality), XR (extended reality), and hybrid digital-physical installations, such as those that Ksawery Kirklewski creates, are a growing sector forecast to exceed $345 billion in global value within the next 5 years.
Legal clarity has, by and large, failed to keep up with the technology, and standards around IP are ambiguous to say the least. Ultimately, this demonstrates the importance of securing IP rights early and contractually defining ownership in tech based entertainment.

We’ve spoken before about how difficult AI can be to navigate when it comes to copyright. Universal Music Group and Warner Records (among others) sued Suno and Udio for copyright infringement on an “almost unimaginable scale”. The story then took an interesting turn. Universal settled its Udio litigation and entered into a licensing deal with the platform, while Warner reached licensing and settlement agreements with both Udio and Suno. Those arrangements have themselves now generated litigation: the American Federation of Musicians has sued Universal and Warner, alleging that licensing recordings featuring AFM musicians to AI companies without further payment or credit breaches their collective bargaining arrangements.
Warner Records announced in late 2025 that they’ve now formed a partnership with Suno, which was described as “a victory for the creative community that benefits everyone.”
They said “with Suno rapidly scaling, both in users and monetization, we’ve seized this opportunity to shape models that expand revenue and deliver new fan experiences. AI becomes pro-artist when it adheres to our principles: committing to licensed models, reflecting the value of music on and off platform, and providing artists and songwriters with an opt-in for the use of their name, image, likeness, voice and compositions in new AI songs.”

We feel there are interesting times ahead as legal teams wrestle with the growth of AI use in entertainment.

Digital twins create similar problems. A single digital representation may draw on patented technology, proprietary software, CAD files, confidential operational data, databases and third-party material, each potentially carrying its own ownership and licensing restrictions .

The Future of IP

For technology and creative businesses, there is increasing value in viewing IP not as isolated assets, but as an interconnected ecosystem.

If you don’t map out who owns what at the development stage, doing it during a high-stakes commercial negotiation can be a recipe for disaster. We’ve spoken before about chain of title, and this is exactly why it’s so important. Clear ownership and well-defined licensing arrangements are the foundations that make everything else possible

Ultimately, the future of IP isn’t just about defensive protection or filing registrations.
It’s about intelligently structuring, ring-fencing, and monetising creative value as it fluidly moves across different media, platforms, and jurisdictions.
And often, the value of the whole can be greater than the individual parts. Collaboration can be awesome.

Collaborate with us

At Asenda Law, we don’t just help you secure copyright and design rights, we make sure you fully understand your ownership and rights.

Our goal is to give you peace of mind that your creative assets are protected from misuse or imitation, both in the UK and beyond.