AV Best Practice Clause # 1| Publisher/Producer Contract

CONTEXT

In the contract between a publisher of a musical work and a producer of an audiovisual production, the publisher grants a copyright authorisation to the producer in order to use the musical work in this audiovisual production. This authorisation will stipulate certain terms/limits to the commercialisation of the audiovisual production.

Under commercialisation is generally understood the following exploitations:

in cinemas;
in broadcasting;
on audiovisual carriers (DVDs, Blu-ray, etc.);
online (Netflix, etc).

The scope of this copyright authorisation is often misinterpreted as also including the copyrights that automatically flow from the above. Nevertheless, the scope of the authorisation granted by the publisher of the musical work has to be limited to the right to synchronize the musical work with the audiovisual production, and subsequently excluding the right to communicate the work to the public and the right of reproduction.

EXAMPLE of a CLAUSE regarding the SCOPE of the COPYRIGHT AUTHORISATION

The Licensor (meaning the publisher) grants the Licensee (meaning the producer) the authorisation to include the Musical Work (reference needs to be made) or part thereof in the Audiovisual Production (reference needs to be made).

This authorisation covers the following types of exploitation of the Audiovisual Production:

in movies;
in broadcasting;
on audiovisual carriers;
online;
for video on demand.

This authorisation does not include the right of communication to the public nor the mechanical reproduction right of the publisher applicable to the Musical Work. The Licensee remains solely responsible for obtaining a licence with the relevant collecting society in order to cover these copyrights.