Specific rights

Exclusive rights

Belgian intellectual property law grants authors and related rights holders significant prerogatives regarding the use of their creations and performances. These specific and exclusive rights grant them a monopoly of use, allowing them to determine who, how, and under what conditions (beyond simple financial compensation) their productions may be exploited, subject to legal limitations and exceptions.

As a result, the use of works and performances that are still protected requires authorisation, either directly from the rights holders or through their representatives, such as agents or collective management organisations. In some cases, collective agreements may also govern the conditions of use.

Therefore, the use of still-protected works and performances requires authorisation, either directly from the various rights holders or from their representatives, such as an agent or a collective management organisation. Collective agreements may also govern the modalities of this use.

Rights under legal licence or compulsory collective management

However, the law provides for certain exceptions to exclusive rights, defining specific uses for which your authorisation is not required. In addition, in some cases — such as cable retransmission — the law mandates collective management of these rights by collective management organisations.

An author or an assignee has two main options for managing their rights:

• Individual management: you manage the rights you hold yourself.
• Collective management: you entrust the management of your rights to collective management organisations (for more information, please consult our dedicated article). These organisations are typically specialised by category of rights holders (authors, performers, producers, publishers, etc.) and by type of exploitation.

Several important collective management organisations operate in Belgium:

• SACD, SCAM, and SOFAM are authors' societies that manage a wide range of creations: performing arts (texts, music, choreography, stage direction), audiovisual, sound creation, podcasts, literature, comics, youth literature, illustration, visual arts, photos, design, architecture, etc.
• Sabam is a multi-repertoire collective management organisation for authors and music publishers.
• Playright is a society of performing artists. Therefore, it only manages related rights.