The Supreme Court confirmed the new rates of royalties for authors and producers of audio-visual works for cable re-transmission of works.

11.10.2019

The new rates of royalties for authors of audio-visual works and authors of works used in films, including rates for producers of such works, have been “officially” approved. They will be due for cable re-transmission. The new rates will replace, by virtue of law, the contractual ones, if they are different than the approved rates.

By means of judgement of 31 July 2019, file ref. No. II CSK 80/90, the Supreme Court retained the remuneration tables approved by the District Court in Poznań for the ZAIKS Polish Society of Authors and Composers (hereinafter: ZAiKS) and the Polish Film-makers’ Association (hereinafter: SFP) in the field of cable re-transmission. The attorney of one of the participants of such proceeding was Att. Janusz Piotr Kolczynski.

In relation to the above, the remuneration shall be payable to separate accounts, i.e. for:

• ZAiKS:

1) 1.1% of net receipts of the copyright holder for re-transmission:

a) in an audio-visual work: for textual works of all Polish co-authors, excluding textual works whose authors entrusted copyright under the management of the SFP; for music works, textual/ music works and choreographic works of all co-authors; for all textual, music, textual/ music and choreographic works previously existing and used in an audio-visual work;

b) outside of audio-visual works: for textual works, music works, textual/ music works, dramatic works, dramatic/ music works, choreographic works;

• SFP:

2) 2.2% of net receipts of the copyright holder:

a) for audio-visual works (apart from the remuneration for the use of textual works, music works, textual/ music works and choreographic works);

b) for marketed videograms with respect to which producers of audio-visual works are vested with neighbouring rights. The SFP rate does not include the remuneration of broadcasters for re-transmission of audio-visual work in their own programmes.

Author: Dominika Sułecka