Bulgaria

[BG] New Collecting Societies Register in Bulgaria

IRIS 2012-1:1/13

Ofelia Kirkorian-Tsonkova

Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”

According to the latest amendments to the Bulgarian Copyright Act of 25 March 2011 all collecting societies active in Bulgaria during the last five years had to submit an application to the Minister of Culture for new registration in compliance with the new requirements of the law (see IRIS 2011-5/9).

The term for applying expired on 25 May 2011, but the tariff for the fees due to the Ministry of Culture for the new registration was prepared by the Council of Ministers and entered into force in July 2011. On 27 October 2011 the Minister of Culture issued the first certificates under the new rules to six organisations and refused only one.

According to the new register of collecting societies in Bulgaria, published on the website of the Ministry of Culture the official organisations with which only the end-users shall conclude contracts are the following:

- MUSICAUTOR concerning copyrights of authors and composers of musical works as well as the rights of music publishers;

- PROPHON concerning neighbouring rights of phonogram producers and music performers;

- TEATERAUTOR concerning copyrights of authors of stage plays;

- COPYBG concerning the collecting of levies for the private use of protected works;

- FILMAUTOR concerning copyrights and producers’ rights on films; and

- EAZIPA concerning copyrights and neighbouring rights in connection with renting and lending of holders of protected works and the re-sale of pictorial and figurative arts.

The only refusal issued by the Minister of Culture was to the foreign organisation AGICOA, which exercises inter alia the rights of (film) producers concerning the retransmission of their programmes and distributes the collected royalties to the rightsholders.