News Update January 2025: Approval and relocation

Approval

On January 31, we sent an e-mail to the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) reiterating our intention to pursue approval as a music collecting society and asking for a response within the first quarter. The DPMA has not yet responded to our last letter in May, which we now simply interpret as a sign that our proposed solutions to existing inconsistencies in the Statutes with applicable law were useful.

In preparation for the application, we had recently updated our business plan and launched three contracts for work and labour to complete our CoRA administration software, which can now create basic statements for licensees and licensors in accordance with our Live Tariff v1.4. A corresponding web frontend for registering live events is currently being developed, and the existing work registration is to be improved. The contracts were made possible primarily by the office moving from Düsseldorf to Essen, which significantly reduces our rental costs.

After approval by the DPMA, these are the prerequisites for the collecting society to commence operations:

• Adoption of the new Statutes by a General Assembly
• Confirmation of the management by the two-stage procedure in accordance with the new Statutes
• Election and appointment of the Commission on Rights Management
• Formal submission of proposals for documents relevant to rights management, such as live tariff, rights catalogue, distribution plan and framework collecting agreement, by the Commission on Rights Management
• Adoption of the above documents by a General Assembly
• Securing of financing and staffing to start operations
• A successfully completed test phase of our administrative infrastructure (work registration, usage reporting, invoicing to licensees, distribution of revenue to rights holders)

We would like to encourage our full members to consider whether they would be interested in running for the Commission on Rights Management, which is required by the planned Statutes. The Commission advises and decides on matters relevant to the right management, e.g. tariffs or the distribution plan, and has the sole right to propose these for approval at General Assemblies.

Relocation

Due to the loss of our subtenants of the office in Düsseldorf’s Rochusstraße and the threat of a steep rent increase after the contract expired in December, it became necessary to find a replacement. Our former board member Oliver has found us new premises, which will significantly relieve us in financial terms. He will also support Eva in the day-to-day office work. We had already largely relocated these works to home office after the pandemic, so the time had come to adapt the premises to our actual needs.

The new postal address of C3S SCE since 1 January 2025 is: Welkerhude 39, 45356 Essen. However, the official domicile of the cooperative remains Düsseldorf.

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