A publishing agreement is a contract between an author and a publisher that settles which rights over the use of a work are transferred and on what conditions. Georgian copyright law regulates these contracts in three directions: through the publisher's exclusive rights over periodical and encyclopaedic editions, through the mandatory content of the licence contract, and through the requirement of written form. This page explains these rules on the basis of articles fourteen, forty and forty-two of the law.
The Publisher's Exclusive Rights
Under article fourteen, publishers of encyclopedias, encyclopaedic dictionaries, scientific works, periodical and continuing collections, newspapers, journals and other periodical editions hold the exclusive right to use the works included in those editions. The publisher is entitled, upon any use of such works, to indicate its own name or to demand such indication.
The use by another person of a work included in a newspaper, journal or other periodical edition is impermissible without the consent of the publisher of that edition or of the author of the work, except in the cases provided for by the law. Where exclusive material published in the press or another mass-information medium is used by another medium, reference to the medium in which the material was first published is mandatory. At the same time, the authors of works included in those editions retain the exclusive right to use their own works unless the copyright contract provides otherwise — the publisher's right and the author's retained right exist alongside each other.
The Essential Terms of the Licence Contract
Article forty provides that a licence contract must stipulate an exact description of the work to be used — its title, volume and genre — the concrete type of use of the work, the term and territory of the contract, the procedure for determining the amount of the honourarium or its amount for each type of use, the procedure and time-limit for its payment, and any other terms the parties regard as essential. This list is a minimum substantive framework: ignoring it makes the contract contestable.
The right to use the work in every manner not directly provided for in the licence contract belongs to the author or the other holder of the copyright. Where the concrete type of use is not indicated in the contract, it is deemed concluded for such use as may be considered necessary for the fulfilment of the parties' intention at the time of its conclusion.