Read It & Own It – Reese Witherspoon’s IP Empire

The whimsical strings of Michael Kiwanuka’s Cold Little Hearts hooked audiences; while unravelling Madeline, Celeste and Jane’s lives in Monterey. Big Little Lies was an instant hit with its captivating exploration of womanhood, ambition and survival.

Jennifer Aniston and Billy Crudup held audience rapt with the high-stakes drama surrounding life in a major broadcasting news network in The Morning Show. The fast-paced telecom wove in contemporary social and political movements like Covid-19, the #MeToo movement, geopolitical ruptures, with a strong element of quirky humour.

Daisy and the Sixes was a blast from the past with its cocaine-filled, rock and roll drama from the 1970s. Kathryn Haan was magnetic in Tiny Little Things, Rosamund Pike chilling in Gone Girls, Daisy Edgar-Jones haunting in the Where the Crawdad Sings. What binds all these productions together is the vision and grit one actress-business woman - Reese Witherspoon.

Reese Witherspoon took to reading when she was unhappy with her career in Hollywood. Reese’s Book Club became a space for a carefully curated selection of stories surrounding women’s narratives. It showcased work by authors who focused on female experiences seeking to make visible voices that have systematically been unheard. What Reese’s Book Club also did was strategically use IP to create a million-dollar Media House – Hello Sunshine.

Witherspoon developed a simple but effective business model – find talent early on, bring it visibility and then adapt it for the big screen. All of this happens with the acquisition of the intellectual property rights to the books – ensuring that no one can alter, edit, subvert what the stories intend to do. She negotiates exclusive adaption rights to the story and her company controls how, where and in what manner the adaptation takes place. What Reese’s Book Club finds, Hello Sunshine makes into a film.

Over time, Hello Sunshine has created an IP library based on brand consistency and loyalty. The company's commitment to women and their stories, has allowed then to see that controlling IP around a subject that serves a content-hungry audience can yield a lot of profit. The consistency maintained in branding and the focus on strong female protagonists has made their IP marketable and attractive to audiences far and wide. Witherspoon’s commitment to her craft and owning the full rights of the story she wants to tell, allowed her to generate capital from narratives. She sold Hello Sunshine for $900 million in 2021 while retaining a stake in the company and a position on the board - she was still in-charge.

Globally, women hold less than 20% of patents, 30% of copyright claims on music, films and stories, they find themselves often mistreated and alienated in the male-dominated field of STEM and the IP generated there. Most IP systems favour domains that are highly-male dominated and tend to undervalue work often associated with women – fashion, textile, domestic innovations. These areas, often seen as feminine-coded are not as prioritised as patents and industrial innovations.

The structural barriers that women face in accessing their IP rights include the lack of literacy about IP, lesser access to lawyers, agents and even discrimination in publishing and funding. These barriers are systemic and woven into the very way IP is created, governed and monetised, thus proving to be a system of isolation rather an individual failure. So even when women create valuable work, they are less likely to profit or capitalise on it.

In cinema and the TV industry, most of women’s creative work is often sidelined or acquired and turned into something they barely recognize – as illustrated poignantly by work done by Sharon Willis, Christina N. Baker, Naomi McDougall Jones, Helen O’Hara and others. Female authors and directors have often reported being ignored when their IP is acquired by big studios that are risk-averse and conform to market-proven statistics.

Witherspoon’s ventures with Reese’s Book Club and Hello Sunshine – identified this gap and worked on it. By building an entire ecosystem of generating, monetising and controlling IP, Witherspoon ensures that she has full control over the narrative – one that puts women front and centre. Some call it a feminist vision, some call it a brilliant business strategy, either way she gets to make millions!