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Not solely can Dwayne Johnson odor what The Rock is cooking … however he can monetize it now, too.
Final month, WWE proprietor TKO Group Holdings added Johnson to its board of administrators. At the side of that transfer, the corporate additionally gave Johnson the IP and trademark rights to his WWE stage identify: The Rock.
A brand new submitting from TKO, nevertheless, reveals that Johnson acquired extra than simply the rights to his alter-ego, he additionally acquired a bounty of IP rights and emblems, from nicknames to catchphrases.
That features The Rock, after all, in addition to his signature tagline: “Should you odor what the rock is cooking.” However it additionally consists of different nicknames, like “The Brahma Bull,” “The Folks’s Champion,” and “The Samoan Sensation” in addition to the names of a few of his signature ending strikes: The “Rock Backside” and “Folks’s Elbow.”
And hilariously, the deal additionally provides Johnson IP rights to a few of The Rock’s notorious in-ring insults.
In line with a duplicate of the IP Task Settlement that TKO and Johnson signed (it was included in TKO’s newest 10-Okay), Johnson now owns the IP rights to taglines that embrace: “Jabroni,” “Sweet Ass,” “Roody Poo,” and “Know your position and shut your mouth.”
Johnson joined TKO’s board in January, simply days earlier than Vince McMahon resigned from the company, considerably overshadowing the information. TKO additionally gave Johnson a inventory award valued at $30 million in reference to the settlement, vesting over time. Johnson can even nonetheless be capable of accumulate royalties in reference to gross sales of merchandise bearing the Rock emblems (together with, presumably, jabroni and sweet ass).
Per a supply, the WWE has been granted a license to make use of The Rock IP for sure classes and merchandise for 10 years, and through that interval Johnson can’t license the IP to companies aggressive with TKO.
As well as, Johnson was granted “different nicknames, caricatures, voice, signature, gestures, routines, costumes or components of costumes, equipment, [and] crowns” related together with his WWE persona.
You possibly can see a full checklist of IP rights and emblems that the WWE and TKO gave to Johnson beneath, in an excerpt from the submitting.
“’Rock IP’ means any and all Mental Property Rights all through the world at any time owned by the TKO Group Events, or any of their respective Associates, whether or not registered or unregistered, referring to (a) the next ring names and taglines: ‘The Rock’, ‘Rocky Maivia’, ‘Crew Company’, ‘Rock Nation’, ‘The Nation’, ‘Roody Poo’, ‘Sweet Ass’, ‘Jabroni’, ‘Should you odor what The Rock is cooking’, ‘The Samoan Sensation’, ‘The Blue Chipper’, ‘The Brahma Bull’, ‘The Folks’s Champion’, ‘The Nice One’, ‘Know Your Function and Shut Your Mouth’, ‘Crew Convey It’, ‘The Rock Simply Convey It’, ‘The Folks’s Elbow’, ‘Rock Backside’, ‘Lastly, The Rock has come again to …’, ‘It doesn’t matter what…’, ‘Blue Hell”’ ‘The tens of millions… (and tens of millions)’, ‘Rockpocalypse’, ‘Undertaking Rock’ and ‘Probably the most electrifying man in sports activities and leisure’.”
