As per information received, Cinefil Producers Performance Limited (“CPPL“) has received registration as a copyright society for cinematographic film works under Section 33(3) of the Copyright Act.
The following image has been received from multiple sources:
As covered in our detailed post here, the Copyright Office had issued a public notice dated November 22, 2018 inviting attention to the fact that CPPL had vide their application dated November 14, 2018 applied through the Registrar of Copyrights, before the Central Government for its registration as a copyright society under Section 33 of the Copyright Act, 1957 in respect of Cinematographic films. The notice and the application can be viewed here.
As per information available on CPPL’s website, it administers around 4540 film titles and has around 482 members. The website further provides that CPPL under the principal and agent relationship collects royalties from India and Overseas in connection to Cinematograph Film Work (VIDEO) by issuing Cinematograph Performance License (CPL) in accordance to the prevailing Copyright legislation. It further states that the primary object of CPPL, being a copyright Administration company is to monetise the public performance right of Cinematograph Film Work (VIDEO) which are communicated to public, in places like – Hotels, restaurants, auditoriums, discotheques, lounges, housing Societies, campground parks, buses, cruises, railways, surface transport, premium hospitals, airways, airports, large event venues, video application developers, sports and stadiums so on and so forth which are essentially below the line (BTL) avenues.
An author of a cinematographic film under Section 2 (d)(v) is a producer. Section 35 of the Copyright Act requires that every copyright society shall be subject to the collective control of author and other owner of rights under the Act whose rights it administers. An owner of a cinematographic film could be the producer or an assignee of rights to whom the producer has granted the rights in the films.
Post Copyright Amendment Act, 2012 coming into effect, this is the first time a copyright society has been registered for non music works. Currently IPRS, ISRA and RMPL are existing copyright societies which deal with the music industry. CPPL would be the first copyright society dealing with cinematographic films. It is interesting to note that Screenwriters Rights Association of India (SRAI) has not yet been granted registration as a copyright society for literary works. This may result in a situation where CPPL is able to claim royalties for public performance of cinematographic films but for the same exploitation, royalties to authors of the underlying script of such films may not be made in the absence of any existing copyright society for such underlying works.
It would also be interesting to see as to whether producers / right owners will opt to assign certain rights in their films to CPPL to manage and administer royalties (similar to labels assigning such rights to RMPL or organisations like PPL for public performance and radio). Traditionally producers have been assigning or licensing these rights to various third party exploitation partners/ aggregators for which they get a considerable value. It would have to be seen whether producers would part away with such rights and give it to CPPL to be managed.
This article was first published on IPRMENTLAW