Protect your copyrights with Intellectual Property rights
Sometimes artists are not aware of their Intellectual Property rights, and this means that they do not protect their creations, performances or even their names. Most of the times the ones that knows how to protect their patrimonial are the ones that have legal advising.
Therefore, Intellectual Property and in this case the IP office of Chile has created a Law 20,243 in 2008 that establishes norms regarding the moral and patrimonial rights of performers of audiovisual artistic works.
To have a better idea of what this law is about here’s what Article 3 of the law states:
“The performer of an audiovisual work, even after the assignment of his or her patrimonial rights, will have the inalienable and are not transferable right to receive remuneration for any of the following acts performed in relation to audiovisual support of any nature in which his or her audiovisual performances are fixed or represented:
a) Public communication or broadcast by Television and/or Cable channels, movie theaters or by any means, digital or analog.
b) Availability to the public via digital interactive means;
c) Rental to the public, and
d) The direct use of a videogram or any other audiovisual support or a reproduction of the same, with profit-making purposes, for its diffusion in a venue or place accessible for the public by any appropriate instrument.
The remuneration referred in this article will not be understood to be included in the assignment of rights that the artist has celebrated before this law and will not affect the rest of the rights recognised by the Intellectual Property Law to the performing artists of audiovisual works.“
This means that if you are an artist, director or scriptwriter you can protect as the law says your artistic patrimonies with Intellectual Property Laws.
New extended rights for Artists, Directors and Scriptwriters
There’s been several cases of copyright infringement and sometimes the infringer gets away without having any consequence for the infringement.
In order to avoid these legal cases and to keep protecting the creations of this industry, Law 20,959 was published on the Official Gazette in Chile to extend the rights established in Article 3 of Law 20,243 to directors and scriptwriters. This law will enter into force on April 29 2017.
According to Article 1 of the law, directors and scriptwriters now have the inalienable and non-transferable remuneration right and their remuneration can be collected through the collective management entity that represents directors or scriptwriters.
Also, this law establishes a remuneration right defence, stating that “the obligation to not exercise the right or to not join a Collective Management Entity… will be considered as unwritten and will be invalid for all legal effects”. This means that directors and scriptwriters can’t be forced to renounce to their remuneration rights through abusive clauses.
On Article 2 of Law 20,959 states that the remuneration of directors, scriptwriters and artists for the cinematic presentation of foreign films to the public, must be in accordance with Article 29 of the Intellectual Property Law that establishes that the price agreed in the rental contracts of foreign films includes the value of all copyrights and related rights due to the cinematographic work and is the distributor’s responsibility. However, these rights will be subject to limitations and exceptions.
If you would like to know more on how to protect your artistic name, performances, written plays… in Chile contact us at: info@brlatina.com and we will give legal advising on what you can protect and what cannot be protected.
