The collecting society word (VG Wort) must not distribute its income from copyrights to the publishers, but only to authors. Therefore, the German book industry fears the end for many publishers.
After the decision of the Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) is the money completely to authors who had previously received only half. The Association of German Book Trade described the judgment as a severe blow to the publishing culture in Germany and called for legal changes. “Otherwise there is the bankruptcy of several small and medium sized publishers,” said Alexander Skipis, chief executive of the Association.
make The publishers would repayments worth hundreds of millions, so that was a great number of publishers in the medium no longer viable. “The amount recoveries – depending publisher – between 20 and 200 percent of the average annual income,” the Booksellers Association.
The Magazine Publishers (VDZ) fear catastrophic consequences by the Supreme Court ruling and expected bankruptcies. Newspaper publishers (BDZV) come too badly, because they feel the lack of revenue not directly into their coffers. The press houses had the distributions of the VG Wort be earmarked for journalism training and funded a training academy. This would now probably “sign the liquidation before the summer break,” stressed the BDZV.
The Bundesgerichtshof ruled that distributions of the VG Wort to the publishers are inadmissible since the publishers themselves according to current laws are not rights holders within the meaning of copyright. The VG Wort, founded in 1958 administers copyright and royalty claims for more than 400,000 authors and over 10,000 publishers in Germany. The VG Wort collects money to pay about libraries, copy shops and textbook publishers for the use of text.
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