On the Internet, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to be rich and famous. Popularity can help! Take Snooki for example.
The MTV star extended the reach of her intellectual property by licensing rights to her name, images, and more in a “Snookify Me” app for the iPhone and Android. It lets users Snookify themselves and their pets.
SEC filings reveal that Snooki could make some serious dough from the deal. Oh, and there’s that stock thing too (see below).
Snooki’s Licensing Agreement
NEP Snooki Enterprises, LLC, the company created by MTV Jersey Shore personality Nicole Polizzi a/k/a ‘Snooki’ signed a worldwide licensing agreement in October 2011 with New Jersey-based (of course!) Apps Genius Corp. to let her “name and likeness [be used] in the development, manufacture, marketing, sale and distribution of social applications and social games.”
Apps Genius agreed to pay Snooki’s company $55,000 per year in cash, in addition to fifty-percent (50%) of revenue generated from sales, sponsorships, and other related uses of her licensed intellectual property.
Starz Management & PR, Snooki’s agent, also gets ten percent (10%) of the total revenues, leaving App Genius with the remaining forty-percent.
Snooki’s Stock Warrants
The licensing agreement also gives Snooki’s company or an assignee rights to 1.1 million warrants to purchase common stock at $0.31 per share. When the market closed today, Apps Genius’s stock was trading at just $0.25 per share.
These warrants eventually expire, so for the moment, Snooki is likely to just sit on a potential revenue source that is currently worthless. Snooki’s agent gets an additional 70,000 warrants to purchase stock under the same terms.
Like Madonna, Snooki is likely relying on a few lawyers and business advisors to help her extend the sources of her income beyond her Jersey Shore fame.
Notoriety also has a tendency to spur a lawsuit or two, no matter how ridiculous the claims.
