Collective management is the exercise of copyright and related rights by organisations known as collective management organisations (CMOs) or collecting societies, which act in the interest and on behalf of the owners of rights and ensure that creators receive payment for the use of their works.
UK: CSC Media Group Ltd v. Video Performance Ltd, Court of Appeal Civil Division, 27 May 2011. Collective management: The Court of Appeal reversed the High Court’s judgement and reinstated the decision of the Copyright Tribunal in respect of the royalty rate payable by CSC Media Group to Video Performance Limited (VPL) for the use…
On 19 November 1992, the European Council adopted the Directive 92/100/EEC on rental right and lending right and on certain rights related to copyright in the field of intellectual property (now replaced by Directive 2006/115/EC), which provides an exclusive right to authorize or prohibit the rental and lending of originals and copies of copyrighted works….
Not a day had elapsed since elections to the board of directors at the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE), Spain’s largest copyright collecting society, when civil guard officers suddenly raided its headquarters at Palacio de Longoria, in downtown Madrid last July 1. Workers were quickly sent out of the landmark modernist building, following…
In a somewhat surprising move, on 12 July 2011 the lower house of the Spanish Parliament urged the Government to abolish the so-called “canon digital” (the private copying levy on digital media) and replace it by a “less arbitrary and indiscriminate system” that provide rightsholders with a “fair and equitable remuneration based on the effective…
BELGIUM – In a case of SABAM (the Belgian Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers) versus a counterfeits dealer, the Belgian Supreme Courts finds that in litigations against copyright infringers, collecting societies can prove the existence of management contracts pertaining to some works by solely producing the official repertoire listing that they mandatorily have to…
It cannot have evaded the notice of anyone interested in copyright matters that Judge Chin at a New York federal district court recently has rejected the so-called Google Book Settlement (GBS). While holding that “the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many”, Judge Chin argued that the GBS…
As mentioned in a previous post, on 22 March 2011 the Spanish Audiencia Nacional (High Court) annulled for formal reasons the Spanish ordinance that determines which digital reproduction equipment and media are subject to the private copying levies. The ordinance had been challenged before the Spanish courts by the Asociación de Internautas (an Internet users’…
Two contradictory legislative proposals have been quite recently submitted for discussion at the Belgian Parliament, which should implement solutions to the thorny file-sharing issue. On the one hand, Senators Morael and Pyryns proposed on 9 December 2010 [Doc 5-590/1] a law “aiming at adapting the perception of copyright to the technological evolution while preserving privacy…
On 2 March 2011 the Audiencia Provincial de Barcelona took note of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in the case Padawan v SGAE (C-467/08) and decided that the indiscriminate obligation of paying private copying levies as provided for in Art. 25 of the Spanish Ley de Propiedad Intelectual (Intellectual…
The defendant, the so-called “cooperative of CD co-owners”, abuses the ‘personal use’ exeption under Article 30 of Copyright, together with the three-step-test under Article 29(1) of Copyright Act, while he operates as a covert form of lending company (see previously reported cases concerning cooperatives of CD co-owners, in Kluwer database). The court, as in previous…
