History of the collective rights management organisations

The world’s oldest collective rights management organisation is the French society SACEM (Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique), created in 1851. In 1876, SACEM established a branch in Geneva.

It was just over 100 years ago that Switzerland established its own collective rights management organisation: in 1923, MECHANLIZENZ, a society for the management of the right to record protected works on sound carriers and music boxes, was created, followed in 1924 by GEFA, the Swiss Society for Performance Rights. Both Swiss societies were powerless, however, in the face of the French competition.

In 1940, the Federal Council laid the foundations for a new system, subordinating the exploitation of authors’ rights to a state approval to be issued only to a purely Swiss society. In 1942, GEFA took over rights management in Switzerland under its new name the Swiss Society of Authors and Publishers (SUISA).   In 1978, the Federal Council extended the statutory monopoly to mechanical rights (reproduction rights for sound recordings), and two years later MECHANLIZENZ merged with SUISA.

The second oldest Swiss collective rights management organisation is ProLitteris, founded by writers and publishers in 1974. In 1982, ProLitteris merged with Teledrama, a society which had specialised in the management of television screenplay and production rights.

In 1981, representatives of the Swiss film industry established Suissimage as a co-operative society for the purpose of managing retransmission rights in audiovisual works.

The SSA (Société Suisse des Auteurs), the successor organisation to the Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques and CABLEAUTEURS, was created in 1985.

And lastly, SWISSPERFORM, the youngest of the five Swiss collective rights management organisations, was founded in 1993. Its creation was driven by the enactment of the Copyright Act in 1992 which introduced related rights for performing artists, producers and broadcasting companies.