Licenses, royalties and services for intellectual property.

You can become a member of ProLitteris if you are an author, a publishing house or an heir and have created published works that are used by third parties.

A management agreement is useful for you if you are regularly active in creative or journalistic work, for example:

• contributions in books, newspapers or magazines
• content for radio or television
• works of visual art or photography

As a member, you receive royalties from uses that are compensated by law as well as from further uses that you can hardly organize yourself.

Membership is free of charge. The terms of the management agreement and the articles of association apply.

If you receive a form or an invoice from ProLitteris, it is binding and based in law.

ProLitteris collects copying levies on the basis of the Copyright Act (URG) and approved tariffs. These apply to companies, schools and libraries. ProLitteris distributes the income to authors, publishing houses and other rights holders.

For you, this means:

• You must provide the requested information in the form.
• The invoice from ProLitteris is binding and will be enforced.
• You must communicate any corrections to your data; they will take effect at the latest for the following year.

ProLitteris is an official collecting society under state supervision. For around 30 years, it has been authorized and obliged to collect statutory royalties.

Companies have to pay a royalty because people at work use protected works, for example by copying texts and images for internal purposes.

This use for internal purposes is permitted by law. At the same time, the Copyright Act (CopA) provides that a royalty is owed for this.

The law provides for a similar royalty for schools (common tariff 7). Private individuals do not pay a copying levy, but there is a royalty on storage media (smartphones etc.), which the collecting society SUISA enforces (common tariff 4).

The royalty is negotiated every few years with user associations and approved by the Federal Arbitration Commission (ESchK).

ProLitteris collects the copying levies and passes them on to authors, publishing houses, and other rights holders.

MyCopyright is a service that allows you to mark a file with a digital seal and a timestamp and deposit it with ProLitteris.

You create evidence that allows you to prove later that a specific file existed at a specific point in time.

The procedure comprises:

• encryption
• a timestamp
• a deposit for the original file

Proof is provided by a certificate that can be produced at any time. Together with your deposited file, this provides evidence that attests to the identity and temporal existence of an idea, a work, or a file.

The principle is similar to a sealed document that is deposited with a bank or a notary’s office. ProLitteris, together with a technical partner, is responsible for the digital sealing and safekeeping.

You can secure almost any electronic files, regardless of whether they are protected by copyright or not.

The MyCopyright service is operated and further developed by ProLitteris together with its partner Swiss Trust Layer.

ProLitteris fulfills social and cultural purposes through two of its own foundations.

For you, this means: part of the income is specifically used for support and promotion.

• The social welfare foundation supports members with old-age pensions and emergency aid. It is financed with 9% of the Swiss income of ProLitteris.
• The Cultural Fund Foundation promotes cultural projects and awards the ProLitteris Prize. For this, 1% of the Swiss income is used.

Both foundations have their own foundation board and are subject to state supervision.