CISAC and WIPO collaborate to provide training for Latin American Copyright Offices
Copyright office officials, lawyers and technicians from 16 Latin American countries came to Mexico City on 27-31 March for a multi-day seminar on copyright. The training seminar was organised by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the National Institute of Copyright (INDAUTOR) of the Ministry of Culture of Mexico along with the collaboration of CISAC member SGAE. INDAUTOR was represented by Director General Manuel Guerra and Legal Director Marco Antonio Morales.
CISAC was called upon to participate in multiple discussions on 29 March during the “Course on Copyright and Related Rights for Latin American Countries”. First, CISAC Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean Santiago Schuster contributed to the panel, moderated by SGAE Foundation Research and Development Director Rubén Gutiérrez del Castillo, on authors’ rights administration and new models of negotiation with digital platforms. Participants analysed the new forms of exploitation and the diffuse border between the rights of public communication and reproduction. In this regard, the importance of common identifiers of works and rights holders, which CISAC plays a central role in developing this area in the online environment, has been pivotal in protecting creators and their works.
CISAC then spoke in a panel on the European Directive on collective management, giving insight on possible effects to other government legislations. Santiago Schuster later joined the panel on copyright and related rights collections for the exploitation of content in the region. Panellists noted that Europe often sets precedence in this realm, evidenced in the strong influence of continental European law on copyright law in Latin America. As opposed to the single market in Europe, Latin America has multiple markets as well as higher levels of collective management regulation.
During the morning of 30 March, CISAC’s Regional Director joined a roundtable debate on the contractual legal systems for cross-border licensing of copyright protected works. Latin America has a unique multi-territorial copyright database, or a LATAM One Stop Shop. This database houses works from societies from 16 countries with publishers registering those works. To date, over 46 million works have been registered. The similar unique database solution of EmmacScam, the Mexican One Stop Shop, was also detailed and operates at a national level. During the debate, the individual cases of Latinautor and EmmacSacm were presented as potential global solutions to cross-border licensing.