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Following the amendments to the Copyright Act promulgated on 9 July 2003, the Ministry of Economic Affairs has published a draft of pro-posed amendments to the Regulations of Copy-right Dispute Mediation. The main points are as follows:
The team "Competent authority" is changed to "Copyrights Authority."
Article 82 Paragraph 2 of the Copyright Act provides that if mediation fails to resolve a dispute between a copyright intermediary or-ganization and a user over compensation for the use of copyright material, the dispute should be submitted to arbitration. To enable mediation to fulfill its function as a means of swiftly resolving disputes, a new provision in the regulations will state that if on receiving notice of mediation the other party states that it is unwilling to engage in mediation, or does not respond within the prescribed time period, this counts as refusal of mediation, and the Copyrights Authority should reject the me-diation request.
Article 82-1 of the Copyright Act requires the Copyrights Authority to present a written statement of a mediation settlement to the competent court for review within seven days after the settlement is agreed. The court must review the settlement promptly, and unless the settlement is unlawful, contrary to public or-der or good morals, or incapable of compul-sory enforcement, the judge should sign the settlement document, and return the document to the Copyrights Authority to pass on to the parties. If the court does not approve the set-tlement, it must notify the Copyrights Au-thority of the reasons.
In line with the above provisions, a new pro-vision is to be added to the regulations setting a time limit of seven days for the Copyrights Authority to communicate a court-approved settlement document to the parties, or to notify the parties of the court's reasons for not ap-proving a settlement.
Article 82-1 of the Copyright Act provides that after a mediation settlement is approved by the court, the parties shall not institute litigation, file a criminal complaint, or bring a private prosecution with respect to the same matter. A court-approved civil settlement shall have the same force as an irrevocable civil judgment, and a court-approved criminal settlement agreeing the payment of a certain sum of money, or a certain amount of other substitute items, or of securities, shall have the same force as a writ of execution. Accord-ingly, Article 15 of the existing regulations, which provides that a settlement concluded by the parties to a dispute shall be deemed to be a contract between them, will be deleted.
If the parties are unable to reach a settlement, the Copyrights Authority shall issue a written declaration of their failure to agree to a set-tlement.
