The Creative Works Office was established in 1996 to take advantage of commercial applications developed in the areas of instructional materials, software, and creative works such as art, music, and other media. The office was designed to tap into the copyrights and content developed at Brigham Young University and was thus dedicated to the commercialization and licensing of creative works.

Prior to the establishment of the Creative Works Office, the existing creative works were being handled and distributed by the Technology Transfer Office. These included CAPE (Computer Adaptive Placement Exams) and some training videos from the college of Nursing. By the time the Creative Works Office was formed, the Technology Transfer Office had been soliciting disclosures for about seven years, but only in three of the ten colleges on campus: the College of Engineering, the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, and the College of Life Sciences, where all the technical disclosures originated. There was also no centralized way of marketing the products coming from the School of Music, KBYU, the Department of Theater and Media Arts, and other departments on campus. It was decided that the best way to market these products would be through a BYU catalog that could be sent to mailing lists available on campus. The first catalog was mailed in December 1997 and was sent to 160,000 alumni. In 1997 the Creative Works Office established an online storefront for the software programs developed by the Humanities Technology and Research Support Center. After a few years, the office decided to partner with the campus book store.