Corint Media is the first com­pa­ny of its kind to have signed a licence agree­ment with Europe’s lar­gest news app UPDAY to cover the rights of the press publishers repre­sen­ted by Corint Media under the new law regar­ding ancil­la­ry rights for press publishers.

The new law, recent­ly adopted by the Ger­man legis­la­tu­re and based on the EU Copy­right Direc­ti­ve, enters into force today.

Depen­ding on the scope of ancil­la­ry rights for press publishers repre­sen­ted by Corint Media, UPDAY will pay up to 11 per cent of its rele­vant reve­nues in remu­ne­ra­ti­on for the use of rights. UPDAY has alre­a­dy made royal­ty pay­ments to Corint Media (then VG Media) under the for­mer law cove­ring ancil­la­ry rights for press publishers, which was declared inva­lid by the ECJ in 2019.

For Corint Media’s mana­ging direc­tors Mar­kus Run­de and Chris­toph Schwennicke, this agree­ment is for­ward-loo­king and a pre­lude to fur­ther licence nego­tia­ti­ons with plat­forms that use digi­tal press pro­ducts, such as Goog­le: “The­re has been a long strugg­le for a strong, enforceable law cove­ring ancil­la­ry rights for press publishers. Now it has been pas­sed and UPDAY can make use of it in a legal­ly secu­re man­ner. Corint Media and the press publishers it repres­ents will recei­ve appro­pria­te pay­ments. We will enter into nego­tia­ti­ons with other users to cover the pay­ment of reasonable remu­ne­ra­ti­on for the use of digi­tal publi­shing con­tent.

In our view, ente­ring into con­tracts accor­ding to the exis­ting struc­tu­re of Goog­le News Show­ca­se is not a via­ble way to achie­ve sus­tainable and appro­pria­te remu­ne­ra­ti­on for publishers. In respon­se to the com­plaint we made, the Ger­man Fede­ral Car­tel Office initia­ted pro­cee­dings last week against Alpha­bet Inc., Moun­tain View, USA, and its affi­lia­tes (“Goog­le”). To achie­ve appro­pria­te remu­ne­ra­ti­on per­ma­nent­ly and sus­tain­ab­ly for the use of con­tent as well as non-dis­cri­mi­na­to­ry plat­form access, joint enforce­ment is requi­red. The more right­hol­ders have their claims enforced by Corint Media, the lar­ger the sum that Goog­le and other plat­forms will have to pay. At the same time, the risk of sub­sti­tu­ti­on by Goog­le for each publisher and its press pro­duct decrea­ses.”

UPDAY ope­ra­tes in 34 Euro­pean count­ries with a total reach of more than 25 mil­li­on users per month. The news ser­vice is the result of a stra­te­gic part­ner­ship bet­ween Axel Sprin­ger and Sam­sung to deve­lop new digi­tal media for­mats for users in Euro­pe. The com­pa­ny com­bi­nes a lear­ning algo­rithm with local edi­to­ri­al teams to give users the con­tent they both need to know (“Top News”) and want to know (“My News”).