ABSTRACT
Foreign Sub-Publishing entails the administration of rights and the exploitation of works in a foreign territory, via a license from the Original Publisher. There are two predominant strategies for managing music copyrights in foreign territories. One method is to grant the world-wide foreign rights, outside of the Original Territory, to a single publisher, in a “Rest-of-World” (RoW) deal. The other method, a Territory Deal, is to negotiate individual deals, territory-by-territory, whereby an Original Publisher is typically represented by different sub-publishers in each of the prominent foreign countries or territories throughout the world. There are advantages to each mode of operation. In an RoW deal, it is clearly convenient to have a single publisher represent a catalogue throughout the world. Obviously, a small U.S. publisher cannot afford the expense of having offices in various countries around the world. It is simply a convenience to sub-license these rights to one global publishing entity. There are also significant advantages to having all global royalties and registrations coordinated within a single coordinating publisher. The foreign subpublisher will normally charge 10-20 percent of the gross collected income in their territory, and distribute the balance to the U.S. publisher. The commission charged by the sub-publisher is entirely negotiable. On the other hand, the advantages of
separate, independent “territory” deals include: (1) more individualized creative attention to your catalogue; (2) more individualized administrative and financial attention to your catalogue; (3) greater flexibility in negotiating commissions and fees structures; and (4) greater flexibility in negotiating the substantive terms and conditions of the Sub-Publishing Agreement. In either deal, the original publisher reserves all rights in the music and all copyright for all areas outside of the defined foreign territory.
