On November 25, 2024, Decree No. 1036/2024 (hereinafter, “the Decree”) was published in the Official Gazette, whereby the National Executive Power repealed the copyright regulations set forth in Decree No. 736/2023, which established the exclusivity of the Reprographic Rights Administration Center (CADRA) as the only entity authorized to collect, manage, and distribute remuneration for the analog reproduction of national works.
The repealed norm also established the exclusivity of CADRA to agree with third parties the licenses for the exploitation of reprographic reproduction rights, in the national territory, the form of collection and the amount of the referred remunerations, as well as their allocation and distribution among the authors and publishers that had published them, even empowering CADRA to collect the remunerations for reproduction in the national territory of foreign publications.
In this regard, Decree No. 736/2023 established that, in order to determine the remunerations corresponding to authors and publishers, CADRA had to consider various factors, such as the regional population of university and high school students, the per capita income of each region, the rate of use of books and other texts, as well as the annual consumption of photocopies and other means of reproduction.
It was also established that public and popular libraries, archives and museums were exempted from paying the fee for the reproduction of educational or research material, and public universities and institutions representing economically vulnerable groups were authorized to request a reduction or exemption from the fee, if the cost would jeopardize the population’s access to this type of material.
In this context, CADRA carried out the collective management and, at the end of the calendar year, paid the authors and publishers for the reproductions, either by digital means or photocopies at university level, of their works.
Under the new regulations, authors and publishers are free to choose the entity that will represent them in the exercise of their intellectual property rights.
