Mackenzie Stuart

OPINION OF MR ADVOCATE-GENERAL MAYRAS DELIVERED ON 12 DECEMBER 1973 ( 1 ) Mr President, Members of the Court, I — Introduction 1. Facts The Belgian Association of Authors, Composers and Publishers, in abbreviated form SABAM, is a cooperative association governed by civil law with the object of exploiting, administering and managing, in the widest sense of those terms, all copyrights and kindred rights in Belgium and abroad, on its own behalf, for its members and associates and for its clients and affiliated undertakings. It acquires copyrights and distributes them among its members. By Article 10 of its statutes as they existed in 1967 any author, composer or producer who wishes to be admitted as a member of the association must in particular assign to SABAM by contract all copyrights and kindred rights which he holds or will hold in all his present or future works. It is in accordance with those provisions that, by standard form contracts, Mr Davis, a composer of music and Mr Rozenstraten, a song writer, assigned to SABAM, in 1963 and 1967 respectively, their copyrights in all their present or future works as well as their rights as performers and producers of gramophone records. They both nonetheless concluded, in March 1969, with the Belgian Radio and Television (BRT) a contract providing for the exclusive assignment of their rights in the words or the music of a song called ‘Sperciebonen’, which was in fact composed at the request of certain officials of the BRT. Mr Davis ... Прочетете още