Music Schools Sued JASRAC

Zen International Patents and Trademarks

The music schools actually filed a lawsuit against Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) on June 20, 2017.

The purpose of the lawsuit is to confirm non-existence of duty of payment of copyright fees against JASRAC.

In this lawsuit, the music schools insisted that the performance rights* do not extend the performance in a music school for the following three reasons:

1. The performance in the music school is not a performance against the "publicly".
2. The performance in the music school is not a performance for "the purpose of making a work seen or heard directly by the public".
3. If the performance rights extend the performance in a music school, it is contrary to the legislative purpose of the Copyright Law (Article 1).

*performance rights:
Article 22-2 The author shall have the exclusive right to perform his work publicly ("publicly" means for the purpose of making a work seen or heard directly by the public).

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