We at Patracode assist our clients in forming Copyright Societies and also take care of the legal formalities required for the Society Registration. The Copyright Societies are legal entities who act as a guardian for the work in which copyright subsist. It safeguards the interest of the owner of the copyrighted work and assures the creative authors a commercial management of their work.
A Copyright Society is a society registered under the Copyright Act to overcome the difficulties of owner of the work to prevent infringement. The functions of society is to grant license of the copyright work for reproduction, performance or communication to public. The Copyright society is entitled to watch out for infringement of copyright and take appropriate legal actions against the infringer.
The conditions for application for Copyright Society registration is whether association of persons incorporated or not should consist of minimum seven owners who come together for carrying business of issuing or granting licenses in respect of any class of works which is copyrighted or in respect of any other work conferred by the Act.
Registration of Copyright Societies
The procedure for formation of copyright society is done through an application to the Registrar of Copyright and each application has to meet the basic requirements. Then once the Registrar approves the application then he shall send it to the Central Government and upon considering various criteria, will register such association of persons as a Copyright Society. The Government may register society subject to condition as well.
If any society registration is detrimental to the interest of the owners of rights then the Central Government shall cancel the registration. For the purpose of business, there should not be more than one society that is registered. The association of owners submit the application to the Central Government for permission to carry business and to be registered as a society.
The applicant only commits to only deal in copyright business and other activities ancillary thereto. Once the application is made to the Central Government then within 60 days the application is settled either by registering the society or rejecting due to some discrepancies but only after giving a hearing opportunity to the applicant.
There are several grounds on which the application can be rejected, some of which are: if the applicant is not competent professionally to carry out the business, or if sufficient funds are not there, or if there is already registered another copyright society which administers the same class of work, or the applicants are not the actual bonafide owners of the work, or if they have submitted an incomplete application.
Once the Copyright Society is registered the Registrar of Copyright will issue a Certificate of Registration. From the date of its registration as mentioned in the Certificate of Registration, the Copyright Society will be authorized to commence and carry on the permitted copyright business in the name by which it has been registered.
Our Copyright Attorney’s at Patracode would be happy to assist you to form copyright society for better protection of your interest in the work in which copyright.
