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.
In its recent judgment in EAÜ v MTÜ Safari Seiklused (the “Safari” case), the Estonian court held that where a person has signed a licence agreement with an authors’ collecting society, with the intention of using the rights of authors commercially for a public performance, they must unquestioningly fulfil all of the terms of that…
The latest large-scale reform of the Spanish Copyright Act was published on 5 November 2014. The key aspects of the reform are discussed here. The bulk of the opposition to the reform contends that two provisions of the Act, namely, the new regulation for private copying and the imposition of a “one-stop shop” system, breach the…
In a recent decision, the Spanish Market and Competition Commission (CNMC), imposed a fine of 3.1 million Euros on the Spanish collecting society, SGAE, for demanding an excessive fee for concert licensing. This decision is of particular interest because the Spanish competition authority has taken a new approach when interpreting the European law on the method of analysing the fairness…
In this judgment, the French Supreme Court ruled that an author who is a member of a collecting society may not take action in infringement cases to protect his economic rights, except in the case of a deficiency on the part of said collecting society. In the same judgment, the Supreme Court ruled that publishing…
Article L.321-1 paragraph 2 of the French Intellectual Property Code (‘IPC’) provides that collecting societies are entitled to take legal action to defend the rights for which they are responsible under their articles of association (by-laws). Collecting societies may therefore take legal action to defend their repertoires and those of foreign collecting societies that they…
Competition and collecting societies: a special application of European legal doctrine in Spain. “It seems to utilise the previous methods in a forced manner, even though those methods had led to very different conclusions on a European level.” In a recent decision by the Spanish Market and Competition Commission (CNMC), once again penalising SGAE with…
On the 1st October 2014, the Copyright and Rights in Performances (Extended Collective Licensing) Regulations 2014 came into force in the UK.1 Licensing bodies and collecting societies already operate within the UK, providing rights management and licensing services for their rightsholder members across a range of sectors including publishing, art and design, music and…
“The answers from Luxembourg were much awaited not only due to the questions being interesting as such, but also because academia, the European Commission and the CJEU do not see eye to eye on these currently highly debated issues.” In response to questions lodged by a Czech court (Krajský soud v Plzni) in a preliminary…
We have closed our second blog poll and we have counted the votes. First of all, it is heartwarming to see that more readers are concerned about the position of orphans than about private copying: whereas our first blog poll about the orphan works directive attracted a few thousand voters, this second poll closed with a result…
“This would mean that the ruling will not leave end-users substantially worse-off, despite the qualification of their acts as infringing. However, that is a difficult argument to make.” In its judgment of 10 April 2014 in Case C-435/12 ACI Adam BV and Others the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that the…
