Actors who have mandated GVL for the corresponding territories, will receive their prospective remuneration for the use of their rights in France and Argentina via GVL (with immediate effect). Both agreements apply retroactively from 2017.
Sandra Klammer, Head of International Affairs, on the conclusion of the agreements:
GVL has obtained a temporary injunction under competition law regulations against the Canadian web radio provider Sonixcast from the Regional Court Hamburg. The injunction prohibits Sonixcast from creating the false impression that web radio operators in Germany can legally broadcast in Germany with a licence of the Canadian authors' society SOCAN. In fact, this licence does not cover neighbouring rights and obligations to pay licence fees which GVL usually collects on behalf of performing artists and record labels.
GVL's ordinary Board meeting took place on 19 March 2013 in Berlin. The 24-member GVL Board represents all artists, producers of sound recordings and event organisers who had assigned their neighbouring rights to GVL. Under the chairmanship of Hartmut Karmeier, and joined by the GVL Managing Directors Dr. Tilo Gerlach and Guido Evers as well as the two Associates' representatives Gerald Mertens (German Orchestra Association (registered association)) and Prof.
GVL announced that it succeeded in increasing its total income during financial year 2012 by EUR 18.6m to EUR 146.9m. The increase is nearly entirely due to income from the copying sector and results from a partial specification of receivables by the ZPÜ (central collection and distribution organisation for private copying levies in Germany) vis-a-vis manufacturers and importers of devices and storage media for private copies.
On 14 February 2014, GVL held rights holders' assembly at the Intercontinental Hotel Berlin that it had brought forward in time. The election of Board members by the rights holders which usually takes place every three years was brought forward due to the fact that the validity of the past Board elections in 2012 was challenged by a rights holder by lodging an appeal.
"We have re-evaluated and re-aligned many processes and structures in the past few years in order to be able to offer both our members and rights users solutions that are ready for the future. The migration of our distribution systems to a usage-based distribution for artists and the intensified cooperation with foreign sister societies are only two examples for the change that our collective management organisation is undergoing", explain the two Managing Directors, Guido Evers and Dr. Tilo Gerlach.
The Federal Court of Justice referred the decision relating to an increase of the GVL share in the GEMA tariff for public performance back to the Higher Regional Court in Munich.
After several years of negotiation, new general agreements were signed with the associations BCH and BITKOM in January 2014. Based on this event, the central collection and distribution organisation for private copying levies in Germany (ZPÜ), as a form of a collection one-stop-shop for nine German collective management organisations was now in a position to pass the belated remuneration on to the affiliated collective management organisations.
"We look back on a successful financial year 2013 where we were able to increase our total returns again. The positive news is emphasised by the recently received private copying remuneration for PCs that we had to declare as blocked funds in our annual accounts", report Guido Evers and Dr. Tilo Gerlach, GVL's Managing Directors.
GVL can look back on a successful financial year 2014: Total returns for 2014 amount to EUR 163.4m and are thus EUR 12.9m higher than in the previous year (+ 8.5%). This noticeable gain of returns is mainly due to increased claims for copying remuneration (EUR 35.1m compared to EUR 22.9m in the previous year), as well as back payments for private copies made on personal computers for the period 2011-2013.
