Royalties and the Author's Unwaivable Share

In one line

A lyricist or a composer whose song goes into a film or a record keeps half the royalty for every use except showing the film in a cinema, and no contract can take it away.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the third and fourth provisos to section 18(1) of the Copyright Act, 1957, read with sections 19(3), 19(9) and 19(10), preserve to the author of a literary or musical work included in a cinematograph film or in a sound recording the right to receive royalties to be shared on an equal basis with the assignee of copyright, which cannot be assigned or waived except to the legal heirs of the author or to a copyright society, and any agreement to the contrary is void.

Why the law has this at all

Because film music made money for everyone except the people who wrote it. A lyricist was paid a fee for the song, signed everything over, and the song then earned for fifty years in records, radio, television, ringtones and streaming.

Because the law had already told them they had no claim. In Indian Performing Right Society Ltd. v. Eastern India Motion Pictures Association, AIR 1977 SC 1443, the Supreme Court held that where a lyricist or composer is commissioned by a film producer under section 17(b) or (c), the producer acquires the copyright in the film and the composer cannot restrain the exhibition of the film.

So the answer had to be money rather than ownership. The Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012 left first ownership where it was and created an unwaivable right to a share of the royalty. It came into force on 21 June 2012.

The provisions

Third proviso to section 18(1), films. The author of the literary or musical work included in a cinematograph film "shall not assign or waive the right to receive royalties to be shared on an equal basis with the assignee of copyright for the utilisation of such work in any form other than for the communication to the public of the work along with the cinematograph film in a cinema hall, except to the legal heirs of the authors or to a copyright society for collection and distribution and any agreement to contrary shall be void."

Fourth proviso to section 18(1), sound recordings. The same for the author of a literary or musical work included in a sound recording not forming part of a film, "for any utilisation of such work", again except to legal heirs or a collecting society, and any assignment to the contrary is void.

Section 19(3). An assignment shall specify the amount of royalty and any other consideration payable to the author or his legal heirs during its currency, and shall be subject to revision, extension or termination on terms mutually agreed.