CIP is governed by the trustees of Creative Intellectual Property, the Charitable Incorporated Organisation established under the Charities Act 2011. Oversight supports quality, review, and continuing development across the framework.
The charity trustees hold ultimate responsibility for the charity's activities, its compliance with charity law, and the application of its income and property solely towards the charitable objects. All major decisions are taken by the trustees at a quorate meeting.
A delegated committee responsible for supporting the development, review, and continuing relevance of the CIP Standard. Includes representation from the five professional communities served by the framework.
Responsible specifically for Platform Certification audits. Separation between day-to-day framework development and independent audit-based review ensures certification decisions are not compromised.
Creative Intellectual Property is led by trustees with experience across intellectual property, technology, fundraising, streaming media, financial systems, governance, and public benefit.
Intellectual property, AI governance, digital provenance, and rights management.
Founder of Creative Intellectual Property, focused on responsible technology, creator rights, provenance, and rights management.
Fawad “Elusio” Zafar is the founder of Creative Intellectual Property, a charity focused on intellectual property protection, AI governance, digital provenance, and rights management. His work explores how emerging technologies can be developed and deployed responsibly to support creators, rights holders, cultural organisations, and the wider public.
Educated at the Inns of Court School of Law, Elusio has a multidisciplinary background spanning intellectual property, information systems, telecommunications, and technology governance. He has contributed to discussions on AI accountability, digital provenance, creator rights, and the governance frameworks needed to support trust and transparency in digital environments.
Elusio is the inventor and co-inventor of several patents relating to AI-generated metadata, cloud infrastructure, synchronization systems, and network technologies. His recent work focuses on the development of provenance and verification frameworks that can help organisations manage digital content, demonstrate authenticity, and navigate the challenges arising from AI-generated media.
Through Creative Intellectual Property, he works with stakeholders across the creative, legal, insurance, academic, and technology sectors to promote responsible innovation, improve transparency in digital ecosystems, and support fair recognition and remuneration for creators in an increasingly AI-enabled world.
Fundraising strategy, organisational development, governance, and partnerships.
Senior fundraising and organisational development leader with experience across charity, conservation, maritime welfare, and membership sectors.
Chris Hirst is a senior fundraising and organisational development leader with extensive experience across the charity, conservation, maritime welfare, and membership sectors.
He currently serves as Deputy Director of Fundraising at DEBRA UK, where he leads strategic income development across philanthropy, trusts and foundations, corporate partnerships, individual giving, and major fundraising initiatives.
Over the course of his career, Chris has held senior leadership positions including Global Director of Fundraising at Aquaculture Stewardship Council and Head of Fundraising at Sailors’ Society, supporting organisations operating both in the UK and internationally.
Alongside his executive career, Chris has served in a number of trustee, governance, and voluntary leadership roles, including with The Fire Fighters Charity, Little Brig Sailing Trust, and Veterans for Wildlife. He has also served as a company director across several charitable and voluntary sector boards.
Chris brings expertise in fundraising strategy, stakeholder engagement, organisational development, governance, communications, and partnership building. As a founder trustee, he is committed to helping the charity build long-term sustainability, strong governance, and meaningful public impact.
Streaming platforms, engineering leadership, product delivery, and operational resilience.
Technical and people leader with experience in large-scale streaming platforms, engineering teams, and resilient media systems.
Mark Ison is a technical and people leader with experience building products, growing teams, and solving complex infrastructure problems. He has worked across large-scale streaming platforms, product-aligned engineering, and operational excellence.
Mark helped lead the transformation of ITV’s video systems into ITVX, supporting the organisation, architecture, and delivery chain needed for major national events and large-scale audience demand. His work spans product, delivery, ISPs, CDNs, and specialist technology partners, with a focus on resilient, high-throughput platforms.
He is Chair of the SVTA Streaming Video Operations working group and is a regular speaker at industry events, including Streaming Tech Sweden.
Incident management, financial systems, client connectivity, and technical operations.
Incident management and technical operations leader with experience across financial services, trading systems, and client connectivity.
Joe Matthews is an Incident Manager at Bloomberg, with a career spanning incident management, client connectivity, trading systems, and technical leadership across financial services.
He has held senior roles at Bloomberg, KCG Europe, and the London Stock Exchange, working in high-pressure environments where clear judgement, communication, and problem-solving are critical.
Joe brings experience in operational leadership, stakeholder management, technology-enabled change, and the practical application of AI and systems thinking to improve decision-making and organisational effectiveness. He holds a BEng (Hons) in Computer Technology from the University of Portsmouth and is a member of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment.
The board brings together practical experience across creative rights, responsible technology, fundraising, infrastructure, operations, and public benefit.
Creative Intellectual Property’s governance is designed to support independence, transparency, responsible innovation, and long-term public benefit.
Creative Intellectual Property is constituted as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) under the Charities Act 2011, using the Charity Commission's model Foundation CIO constitution. A Foundation Model CIO has two important properties: the members of the CIO are the charity trustees themselves, and the trustees have full responsibility for how the charity is run.
Nothing in the constitution authorises the application of the property of the CIO for purposes which are not charitable.
The CIO has power to do anything calculated to further its objects, including:
Benefits and payments (clause 6): No trustee or connected person may receive goods, services, employment, or financial benefit from the CIO unless specifically permitted. The trustee concerned must withdraw from the relevant meeting and may not vote.
Conflicts of interest (clause 7): A trustee must declare the nature and extent of any interest in any proposed transaction. A register of trustee interests is maintained and updated at each board meeting.
Decision-making (clause 13): Decisions may be taken at a properly convened meeting or by written resolution agreed by a majority of all trustees. Electronic meetings qualify.
Quorum (clause 15(3)): Two trustees, or the number nearest to one-third of the total, whichever is greater.
Creative Intellectual Property is governed by a board of trustees appointed under clause 9 of the CIO Foundation Constitution. The constitution requires a minimum of three trustees and permits up to twelve. The current trustees are introduced in the Trustees and Governance Board section above.
Each trustee has a duty:
A register of trustee interests is maintained at the principal office and is available on request. Current entries include: Mr. Fawad “Elusio” Zafar, Director of Creation Rights. The relationship is disclosed under clause 7 of the constitution.
The CIP Standard is governed by the Standards Committee of Creative Intellectual Property Charity. It is the body responsible for supporting oversight of the framework and helping maintain its quality, consistency, and continuing relevance.
The Standards Committee is structured around representation from the professional communities served by the framework:
The Committee supports the framework by helping guide standards oversight, review, and continuing development. Areas include standards oversight, framework review, certification quality, continuing development, governance support, and alignment across professional communities.
The Standards Committee is supported by an independent audit panel responsible specifically for platform certification audits, providing separation between day-to-day framework development and independent audit-based review.
Read more about the Standards Committee →
The framework includes a regulatory monitoring function that tracks relevant legal and policy developments and supports updates to module content and recertification requirements. This function monitors:
Examination delivery: A digital examination environment for multiple choice, written, and practical modules, including secure proctoring for legal and underwriting designation examinations.
CPD tracking: A continuing professional development tracking system for legal practitioner and underwriter renewals, linked to regulatory update alerts.
Revocation procedure: A formal procedure for revoking designations in cases such as breach of professional standards, platform compliance failure below the required threshold, or material claims arising from certified party conduct.
Mutual recognition: A future mutual recognition structure for mapping CIP certification to existing professional designations, including ISO 42001 and C2PA frameworks.
Contract registry: A contract registry function linked to verification of CIP Standard Contract status via the Rights Registry.
The CIP Advisory Board provides specialist expertise to the trustees on the technical, legal, and creative-industry questions the framework addresses. Advisers do not hold trustee responsibilities; their role is to bring deep domain knowledge into the development of the standard, the course content, and the certification criteria.
The Board is currently being assembled across four specialist domains:
Expressions of interest are welcomed at advisory@creativeip.org.
The charity's educational purpose commits it to neutrality on contested questions. On settled points of law, the charity teaches the law accurately. On contested questions, for example, the use of copyrighted material for AI training, the charity presents the main competing positions with references to sources for each, and does not advocate a particular outcome.
All three charitable objects are stated for the public benefit. Activities are available to the general public, free of charge where reasonable, with concessions or free places offered to students and to those for whom any fee would be a barrier.
Full legal, neutrality and public benefit statement →
Mr. Fawad “Elusio” Zafar, Founder Trustee and Chair, is also a Director of Creation Rights, a commercial entity supporting parts of the wider framework. This relationship is disclosed on the public register of trustee interests under clause 7 of the constitution. The CIP Standard is a charitable framework governed by Creative Intellectual Property (the CIO). Creation Rights operates separately as a commercial supporter of the framework.
A reference template implementing the CIP Governance Minimum Dataset, the 10 items a board minute, governance record, or risk-committee paper must contain to qualify as a CIP-aligned governance record. Covers all items with prompts and example values.
For governance-related enquiries, please contact governance@creativeip.org.
Creative Intellectual Property Charity
London, UK
Recognition within CIP is not automatic. Certificates, badges, designations, and certification marks are tied to defined standards, and those standards require oversight if they are to remain credible over time.