Annotatie op "Nanada/Golden Earring Hoge Raad 7 juli 2017, ECLI:NL:HR:2017:1270"

Country

Author

P. Bernt Hugenholtz

Link

https://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/Annotatie_AMI_2018_2.pdf

Summary

"Publishing contracts which have been concluded for an indefinite period can in principle be canceled, with transferred rights being returned. The judgment also teaches that authors and artists who want to put an end to exploitation agreements do not need to rely only on the new copyright contract law. Next to the arsenal of mandatory provisions of Chapter Ia Copyright Act (right to equitable remuneration, best seller determination, non-usus rule and invalidation of unreasonably onerous clauses) the general rules of law play an important role in the protection of authors and artists against unfair contractual practices. This applies in particular for the possibility explicitly recognized in the Golden Earring judgment to cancel an operating agreement, a power which is not regulated in Chapter Ia Copyright Act. In addition, the reasonableness and fairness require the operator to retro-transfer the rights granted. Admittedly sufficiently serious grounds will in principle be required before an agreement can be terminated, but long-term exploitation agreements for which the investments of the music publishers are recouped appear can apparently be cancelled. In practice this could mean that the dissolution scheme of art. 25 (e) Copyright Act will be invoked especially in the case of exploitation agreements for a fixed term."

Contributed By

Lucie Guibault