The Lord of the Rings Trilogy 

What happens when one very powerful Hollywood director wants to keep content secret for a 3 year period and has an army of 35 hardcore licensing attorneys ready to attack? 

You invent a means of distributing content with markers to enable tracking of their use or misuse throughout the Internet.  You also introduce 2:00 a.m wake up calls from Peter Jackson in New Zealand as he is reacting to leaks of content.  

In all, hundreds of licensees of Lord of the Rings products, from shower curtains to cereal bars, changed the way they managed content preserving the secrets until the release of The Return of the King in 2003.