The Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) has proposed an amendment to the law governing copyright collective management organisations (CMOs). The draft amendment is expected to be implemented in 2010.
There are seven CMOs in Taiwan managing four categories of copyrighted works: musical works, sound recording works, audiovisual works and literary works. Unlike many other countries that have a category of works managed by only one CMO, in Taiwan, there are three CMOs managing musical works, and two CMOs managing sound recordings. Some CMOs have members from various countries, while others have mostly local members.
One drawback of the system is that, since copyrighted works of different categories might be involved in a single licensing transaction, users often need to deal with different organisations that have their own royalty rates, which adds complexity to the licensing procedure and inconveniences users. This also hampers licensing transactions and explains why the total licensing fees collected by the three CMOs that manage musical works for the past three years amounted to only $1.75 million.
According to the draft, new CMOs cannot be established if their functions overlap those of existing CMOs, and existing CMOs are allowed to merge into a cross-category CMO. Moreover, TIPO may designate certain CMOs to set a common royalty rate, with one responsible for collecting royalties, and will not interfere with the set copyright royalty rate unless a user requests a review. When a case is under review, the user can be exempted from civil and criminal liabilities by making a temporary royalty payment, which will be brought in line with the rate decided by TIPO.
Under the current law, a user is obliged to provide the concerned CMO with a listing of the works used. This will no longer be necessary. Furthermore, following international practice, the draft amendment proposes that, in a case where a CMO member terminates its agreement with a CMO before expiration of the agreement term, users may continue using works of the member within the agreement term by paying the CMO only and the member may ask the CMO for their remuneration within the agreement term.
Once the draft amendment is implemented, existing CMOs might merge on an extensive scale. Whether those with more foreign members will dominate the market and whether copyright licensing transactions will increase will be worth observing.
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| Tony Chang |
Saint Island International Patent & Law Offices
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