Best Practices in Copyright Tracking by CEPIC

On January 27th 2022 CEPIC (Centre of the Picture Industry), a prominent industry organization representing more than 400 picture agencies and photo libraries, released an important document summarizing best practices in copyright tracking.

Why the CEPIC document matters.

The market for copyright tracking solutions is often in-transparent and photo agencies and photographers find it hard to pick the right approach and copyright enforcement provider.

It is even harder for them to find out which in-house preparations to make before getting the first claims going.

The Best Practices in Copyright Tracking by CEPIC gives good orientation for agencies starting their copyright enforcement activities.

Key Takeaways.

From our point of view among the most important take-aways from the document are:

• always make a friendly post-licensing offer first; ask for realistic fees
• keep full control of your cases - and make sure that the claim remains your's (i.e., do not assign it to a third party for enforcement purposes)
• keep communication open with infringers and try to achieve an amicable solution

We are happy to see that the joint experience of the CEPIC work group seems to confirm that a friendly, amicable post-licensing approach in which the agency retains full control of the case is the way to go. These are some of the core tenets around which we designed the Fair Licensing Service.

Who worked on the document?

What is great about the Best Practices document provided by CEPIC is that it is built on the experience of practitioners.

The work group that compiled the document included representatives of agencies and copyright enforcement providers alike. The work group included:

Agency representatives

• Jason Fisher – Dreamstime (USA)
• Marion Bigot – AFP (France)
• Lars Modie – TT (Sweden)

Copyright Enforcement Representatives

• Dennis Wetzig – PIXRAY/Fair Licensing (Germany)
• Elsa Bizet – Pixtrakk (France)
• Geoff Cannon – PicRights (European offices)

The CEPIC Representatives

• Sylvie Fodor
• Valérie Théveniaud-Violette

PIXRAY and Fair Licensing where happy to contribute to the work group through our CEO and Co-Founder Dennis Wetzig.