Royalty Rights And Off Beam Praxis

The Copyright Act, 1957 aims to encourage talent and make copyrightable works available to the public at large by striking a balance between the interests of all the stakeholders involved therein

Law is a reflection of a society and amendments are the essential reforms which are required at regular intervals to make a society progressive. Prior to the Copyright Amendment Act, 2012, the authors could not retain their right to receive royalties inasmuch as they were obligated to assign all the rights in a work created by them to the person/entity at whose instance such work was created. The said practice resulted in concentration of profits, generated through commercial exploitation of such works exclusively in the hands of the producers, rendering the authors of the underlying works unaided and forsaken. The legislature befittingly took cognizance of the plight of the authors at the time and accordingly, amended the Copyright Act, 1957 to bring about the following significant changes which are pertinent to the aforesaid issue:

• give independent rights to authors of literary and musical works in cinematograph films and ensure that the authors of the works, in particular, author of the songs included in the cinematograph films or sound recordings, receive royalty for the commercial exploitation of such work.