I think this metaphor doesn't pass the smell test, because there are loads of examples of products with royalty structures where ownership is kind of well defin

I think this metaphor doesn't pass the smell test, because there are loads of examples of products with royalty structures where ownership is kind of well defined. I don't believe that Harrison Ford owns just the vertical slices of star wars scenes he is present in. An editor of a book doesn't own just the changes they made. And for things like books based off of existing material, the author of the book doesn't own Star Wars concepts right? They're using that under a specific license as well. And yet royalty payments for movies exist. Though to your point Hollywood accounting is _the_ classic example of doing a bunch of sneaky stuff to avoid paying royalties.