Legal Question in Entertainment Law in Yugoslavia
Iptv broadcasting rights
We are production and distribution company in Slovenia and aldo co-owners of one free to air Tv station.
Recently,two new IPTV subscirption-based stations/provider have been beginning to broadcast first our programs of our TV station in their offer as well as our program in distribution from other Tv channells,everything without any written consent and contract from our side.
Couple of questions:
1.Which rights do they need to buy from us as producers/distributors IPTV or IPTV PAYTV rights ?
2.Do they owe to us damages for the programs alreay aired without any written consent,contract,etc.?
Thank you for all the help.
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Iptv broadcasting rights
As regards your e-mail of 3 November 2006 on IPTV broadcasting rights, we
would like to inform you on the following:
You are entitled to several rights granted by Croatian Copyrights Act
depending on your enrolment in creation of the broadcasted program.
Any subject that created or participated in creation of the broadcasted
program is considered to be the author and thus entitled to exclusively:
reproduce, distribute, present to the public or remake that program, as well
as to grant the use of these rights to any third party.
Beside the authors, the specific rights are also granted to producers
(namely, TV or film producers) i.e. creators of any audiovisual creations,
which includes producer's exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, present
or publicly expose the audiovisual creation.
Also, if you are broadcasting the program that authored by other persons,
you probably have the consent of these authors. Any third party that is
broadcasting your program without your consent or the consent of the authors
is violating your rights that have been granted to you by the author as well
as the authors rights as the author did not grant these rights to that third
party.
Thus, the broadcast of the third party which is not granted by any consent
from your side or the side of the authors represents a valid ground for
damage compensation, as well as for misdemeanor penalties for the offenders.
In addition, for such violations of copyrights Croatian Criminal Act
prescribes money penalties as well as prison penalty.
If you have any additional question, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Best regards,