Copyright law: Parliament ‘pushing collective management organisations out of Cyprus’

It appears that seems that the Parliament is ‘evicting’ collective management organisations (CMOs) with its insistence on passing a law, which not only does not improve the existing legal framework, but creates more distortions in the area of ​​copyright management and leaves out the beneficiaries themselves, who, as we are informed have decided that if case this passed, will appeal to the European Courts.

It should be recalled that, last July, the Parliament passed a law bringing at the last minute a series of amendments, which made it unconstitutional and incompatible with European Union law.

This fact led President of the Republic Nikos Christodoulides to send it back to the House, with the Plenary of the Parliament meeting in an emergency last week partially accepting the referral and bringing about new amendments.

Following this, the ball is now in the court of the President of the Republic, who is being asked to decide whether to refer the law to the Supreme Court.

The law passed by the Parliament last week, however, does not seem to cover the gaps in the field of copyright management, with collective management organisations anxious about what will happen next.

In fact, as InBusinessNews has been informed, collective management organisations (CMOs) are even considering leaving the island, which is expected to leave the beneficiaries exposed and risk being left without any income at all from the use of their projects in Cyprus.

As InBusinessNews has been further informed, the organisations strongly disagree with two of the amendments made to the impugned law, in order for the President of the Republic’s referral to be partially accepted by the Plenary of the Parliament.

Organisations' concerns and reservations

In particular, the collective management organisations are expressing strong reservations regarding the addition of a new sub-paragraph [sub-paragraph (iv)] to article 26 of the basic law, which provides that (translated from Greek) " in case the user concerned disagrees with the charges proposed by the Collective Management Organisation Management, pays him the fee that the interested user deems reasonable in accordance with the provisions of sub-paragraph (ii) and half of the amount of the dispute is paid under protest to a fund maintained by the Competent Authority and held until the dispute is resolved in accordance with the provisions of articles 43, 44 and/or 45 ".

The position of the collective management organisations, as InBusinessNews is informed, is that the DISY MP and chairman of the Parliamentary Energy Committee, Kyriakos Hadjiyiannis, who had tabled the original proposal of the law that was passed on 11 July, wrongly invoked German legislation.

As they argue in this regard, paragraph 37 of the German law provides that in case there is no agreement between CMO and the user, as to the amount of the fee, the latter shall pay to the former the part of the fee recognised and the remainder of the fee shall be paid either by reservation to the CMO, or deposits it with a reservation in favor of the CMO.

That is, based on German legislation, all the remuneration requested by the CMO is paid in advance, while otherwise, the dispute regarding the amount of the remuneration is resolved in the courts.

Therefore, they emphasise, any user in order to be licensed and reproduce public works of the beneficiaries, should in one way or another pay the entire fee requested by the Organisation and not half of the difference between what is requested and what the user deems reasonable, indicating at the same time that otherwise, he is publicly reproducing without permission.

The non-existent Intellectual Property Authority

With a reference included in the legislation that half of the dispute will be deposited with the Intellectual Property Authority, the collective management organisations point out that such an authority does not currently exist and is not in operation, since the Regulations for implementation of the basic harmonising law that was passed after huge efforts by stakeholders in 2017, have not yet been passed.

It is noted that the Regulations of the Ministry of Energy have been submitted since 2022 to the competent Parliamentary Committee, which, however, does not proceed with their vote under the pretext of discussing Hadjiyiannis’ proposed law.

It is also noted that as long as there are no Regulations, there cannot be an Intellectual Property Authority and therefore as long as this Authority does not exist, users refuse to pay collective management organisations, citing their non-registration in the Authority's registers.

In this regard, however, the CMOs express concern as to what will happen if the user and the Organisation do not come to an agreement after the intervention of the Authority, which does not exist at the moment anyway, as well as if the Intellectual Property Authority, when it is established, will be staffed with the personnel required to manage the complaints submitted to it in a timely manner, citing as an example the fact that under the previous regime, a complaint has been pending before it since 2007, without any decision having been issued until today.

Given the above, it is estimated that in the event that the CMO appeals to the courts against the use, the adjudication of the case will take at least 7 to 10 years to issue the decision and another 3 to 4 years to adjudicate any appeal by the Court of Appeal, with the user all these years, however, being able to fully exploit the works of the beneficiaries without them being paid.

Other concerns

In addition to the above, the CMOs also disagrees with the addition of a new subsection to article 26 of the basic law, which provides (translated from Greek) that "the user is entitled to pay, annually or as otherwise agreed, a lump sum to a collective management organisation, for the charge corresponding to each right for which it is licensed."

According to the collective management organisations, this provision causes a lot of distortions, since in essence the use for one category of works, as for example for music where the beneficiaries are the composer, the lyricist, the singer, the musician and the producer, will be able to choose to pay an organisation - eg. the one who represents the composer, with the remuneration set by the composer alone for the rights he licenses and then the other 4 will have to seek from one party - in this case the composer- their money, for which, however, they will not have been paid and therefore will not hand it over to them.

They hope for a reference to the Supreme Court

However, after the partial acceptance of the referral of the President of the Republic by the Parliament, the collective management organisations, based on their concerns, hope that President Christodoulides will not sign-off on the law, as amended, and will appeal to the Supreme Court.

It is noted that the President of the Republic has two weeks after the passing of the legislation to make his final decisions.

In other words, he will have until 23 August, at the latest, in consultation with the Law Office of the Republic, to make his decisions on whether he will sign or refer the law to the Supreme Court.

(Source: InBusinessNews)