Music-industry contracts — publishing, recording and synchronization deals — rest on one and the same legal machinery: copyright is transferred by law, by will, or by contract. The Georgian copyright law regulates the grounds of that transfer, its form and the consequences of breach in general terms, and these provisions underlie every music deal. This page explains the machinery on the basis of articles thirty-five, thirty-six, forty-two and forty-four of the law.
The Grounds of Transfer
Under article thirty-five, copyright is transferred by law or by will through inheritance, or by contract. By law, the exclusive rights of use of a work pass to heirs within the term of validity of the copyright, unless the will provides otherwise. After a musician's death the property rights continue in this way, and a label or publisher may acquire them from the heirs by contract.
The personal rights of authorship, of the name and of the integrity of the work are not transferred by inheritance: heirs have the right to defend them, and this authority is not limited in time. An author may, during their lifetime, designate a person to defend those rights until the author's death. Where heirs do not exist or defend the personal rights improperly, their protection is pursued by the National Intellectual Property Center, Sakpatent. Unless the author determined otherwise, only the right to allow others to add an illustration, foreword, afterword, commentary or explanation to the work passes by inheritance.