Representing in a dispute over Withdrawal of Rights from CMO

Eva Media LLC, an exclusive licensee of U.S. rightsholder, has sent a request to the Ukrainian League of Copyright and Related Rights (ULCRR) for withdraw its phonogram catalog. The ULCRR is a collective management organization (CMO) exclusively authorized to collect remuneration for public performance of phonograms in Ukraine. The CMO has ignored the application filed by the right holder not alone but tried to collect remuneration from catalog users, believing that it only has the right to do so. Users who paid the remuneration to Eva Media LLC as a licensee started to doubt whether the rights had been in fact withdrawn because a list of withdrawn phonograms was not published on the ULCRR website.

As part of the case, the procedure for withdrawal of rights from the CMO has been analyzed for the first time ever, though its detailed regulation was introduced in 2018 by the Law on Effective Management of Property Rights of Right Holders in the Field of Copyright and (or) Related Rights (Law 2415).

The team of Vasil Kisil and Partners composed of attorneys at law Ilarion Tomarov and Daria Romashchenko has been acting for Eva Media LLC before courts of all instances.