Collective management

Collective management is the way of exercising copyright and related rights by which rightholders entrust an organisation of which they are members with the task of authorising the use of their works, collecting the corresponding remuneration and distributing it. It is governed by Articles L. 321-1 et seq. of the French Intellectual Property Code, thoroughly overhauled by the transposition of Directive 2014/26/EU on the collective management of rights. It rests sometimes on a voluntary mandate from rightholders, sometimes on a statutory obligation.

Collective management organisations

Collective management organisations are legal persons, most often incorporated as civil-law companies, owned or controlled by their members and not for profit, whose main purpose is to manage rights on behalf of several rightholders. Their activity is subject to obligations of governance, transparency and accounting, to rules on distribution and payment deadlines, and to the supervision of an oversight commission attached to the Court of Auditors. Rightholders retain the right to limit their mandate to certain rights, categories of works or territories and to withdraw it on notice. In France, the main organisations cover music, dramatic and audiovisual works, graphic and visual arts, the written word, and the rights of performers and producers.

Mandatory collective management

The statute imposes collective management for certain rights whose individual exercise would be impracticable. This is the case for the private copying levy, for the equitable remuneration due for the use of commercial phonograms under the statutory licence, for the reprographic reproduction right, which is assigned by law to an approved organisation upon publication, for cable retransmission and for the public lending right. Directive (EU) 2019/790 also enshrined extended collective licensing, whereby a sufficiently representative organisation may authorise uses on behalf of non-member rightholders, subject to their right to opt out of the scheme.

Litigation and interaction with competition law

Collective management organisations have standing to bring proceedings to defend the rights entrusted to them, in particular for infringement, and the Court of Cassation admits their action as soon as the work falls within their repertoire. Their dominant position on their market subjects them to the scrutiny of competition law, both as to membership conditions and as to tariffs, which users may challenge before the courts.

Key points

Collective management allows rightholders to exercise collectively rights that cannot be managed individually, through organisations controlled by their members and subject to transparency obligations. It is mandatory for private copying, equitable remuneration, reprography and lending. For a user, identify the competent organisation before exploiting any repertoire and keep evidence of the authorisations, since the organisation may sue for infringement.

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This glossary entry is general in scope and does not constitute legal advice.

Dhenne Avocats is a patent litigation firm. Matters outside that field, such as trade marks, designs, copyright and IT contracts, are handled by practitioners the firm works with regularly, and by the firm itself when they arise in a patent dispute.

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