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GVL to implement VGG (Act on Collective Management Organisations) by the end of 2016

GVL is going to adapt its Articles of Association as well as its organisational structure based on the new legislative instrument, the Act on Collective Management Organisations (VGG) by the end of 2016. Rights holders who have already signed the current version of rights agreements will not see any changes to the applied practice as a consequence of the VGG. The rights administration agreements are going to be slightly adapted to the statutory requirements.

The VGG entered into force on 01 June 2016 and replaced the previous Copyright Administration Act. With the implementation of the EC Directive, generally mandatory standards, many of which are already applied in Germany, are now established for collective management organisations.

 In the course of the new legislative regulation, GVL would like to take the opportunity to inform its members on the following rights:

  • GVL continues to be subject to the obligation to manage rights, which means that it has the duty to manage the rights, protected subject matter and areas in its fields of activity at adequate conditions, unless there are objective reasons not to do so. 
  • When entering into a rights administration agreement which specifies the rights managed in particu-lar, GVL acquires its rights holders’ authorisation for each individual right to be managed, and doc-uments this step accordingly. 
  • The rights administration agreement or the withdrawal of rights are usually subject to a notice peri-od of six months prior to the end of a financial year. A minimum contractual term shall no longer be applicable. 
  • Furthermore, members shall now have the opportunity to assign the right to anyone to issue a non-commercial licence for the exploitation of their performance and/or audiovisual and/or sound re-cording (Art. 11 VGG). This shall also apply in cases where rights holders have assigned their rights for management purposes to GVL.