Sharing your Copyright Agency payments with other rightsholders
July 10, 2017
Our major distributions for the year have recently been sent out and we would like to ensure our members are aware that you might need to share the payment with your co-authors or publisher if you are not the sole rightsholder.
To check, please see the Notes section of your payment summary.
If the terms:
- Default
- Default pre-claimed, or
- Nominated recipient
appear in the Notes section, you may be obliged to share some of this payment with other parties to your contract, such as your publisher and/or co-authors.
How to determine whether you need to share the payment
- Check your contract
We pay one rightsholder a 100% allocation for a work. The rightsholder is then obliged under their contract to share the payment with any other rightsholders. If you receive a payment from us, check your publishing contract for any amount you may need to share.
- Contact your publisher if necessary
If you can’t find the contract or are unsure about what to do, contact your publisher.
Confirmation that a payment has been shared
We may contact you to confirm that your legal obligations to share a payment have been met.
If you have further questions, you can contact the Australian Society of Authors, the Australian Copyright Council or the Arts Law Centre of Australia for help.
Don’t want to manage sharing arrangements?
If you would prefer not to have to make on-payments to others, please let us know. We will then make payments to your publisher who can share the payments with you in accordance with your contract.
When you don’t have to share a payment
You don’t have to share a payment if you are the sole rightsholder (e.g. rights have reverted to you from a publisher under your publishing contract).
You also don’t have to share a payment if Copyright Agency has been notified about all of the shares between the various rightsholders (the contract ‘splits’). In this case, we pay each rightsholder directly in accordance with the contract. In this case, your payment summary’s Notes section will contain the word: Notify.
If the rights have reverted to you or you have any other questions, please alert us by emailing the Copyright Agency Member Services Team at memberservices@copyright.com.au or 1800 066 844.
More information
Go to www.copyright.com.au/membership/payments/ for more information about distribution of licence fees and payments.