According to: http://www.amex.com/etf/dataDwn/DIA_ad.pdf The DIA sponsor is PDR Services LLC, yet the Licensor is Dow Jones & Company and State Street Global Markets LLC received the license. Please clarify: Does Dow Jones & Co owns the Diamonds, or not?
I could be wrong on this, but my assumption is that it would work a lot like the futures contracts do. For example with the S&P500 Futures when the CME got those going they had originally wanted to go with the DOW Jones, but the people at Dow where a pain in the ass to deal with for the licensing agreement, so they went with whoever the folks are that own the S*P500. In that case then the exchange owns the contract and the company that owns the rights to the S*P500 is paid a royalty (license) fee for every single contract traded. Id assume with the diamonds, spyders etc etc that a very similar agreement is put in place. The company that puts the index together and owns the intellectual proparty rights would grant a license to another company who would securitize it. The company who securitized it would be the owner, but they would be obligated to pay a fee for each share traded or however the deal is put together. I'm no lawyer and so I always reserve the right to be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's how this one would work. So it would be as follows. Dow Jones and Company owns the rights to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. PDR services probably would have said hey we want to put this security together using the DOW, but since you own the rights to the DOW we have to work together. So they'd have come to a licensing agreement where by PDR securitized the product and owns it, while paying Dow Jones according to the agreement they have. I have no idea what State Street's position in the agrangment would be.
State Street Global Advisors is the sponsor and manager of the Dow Diamonds (DIA). Refer to DIA website at https://www.spdrs.com/product/fund.seam?ticker=DIA