GCA And IFRRO Celebrate World Book & Copyright Day And World IP Day In Tbilisi, Georgia
The Georgian Copyright Association (GCA) teamed up with IFRRO on 24 April 2018 to organise a seminar on “Copyright Collective Management of Literature Works”. 
© Pierre-Olivier Lesburguères
A member of IFRRO since 2010, GCA is the only Collective Management Organisation (CMO) authorised to manage copyright and related rights in Georgia, including reprographic rights and administration of public lending right. The revenues distributed by the CMO to rightholders are increasing and GCA wants to continue servicing its members, users and society by expanding its licence coverage.
On 24 April, one day after World Book and Copyright Day and two days before World IP Day, the Chairman of the GCA Board, Giga Kobaladze, Deputy Chairman, Mirian Kululashvili, IFRRO’s Manager for Policy and Regional Development, Pierre-Olivier Lesburguères, and International Public Lending Right’s Coordinator, Jim Parker, met with authors, publishers and libraries for a one-day seminar.
Giga Kobaladze led the discussions and explained the legal basis for GCA’s operations and how they plan to implement lending rights with the support of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia. Pierre-Olivier Lesburguères shared international experience on countries that successfully implement collective licences and distribute the compensation due to them to authors and publishers, and he highlighted the importance given to Intellectual Property Rights and copyright in the Eastern Partnership initiative and in the Association agreement signed between the European Union and Georgia. Jim Parker, building on his experience in the UK and as Coordinator of IPLR, explained the rationale behind public lending right and showed how essential these revenues are for rightholders while being harmless to libraries.
The seminar was covered in news reports broadcasted on a number of Georgian TV channels - watch them here, here and here.
The World Intellectual Property Organization pinned down the GCA-IFRRO Seminar on their official map of events celebrating World IP Day, the only event of this kind in Georgia and one of only two in the Caucasus region.
In conjunction with World IP Day, GCA commissioned local artist Gvantsa Jgushia to paint a street art celebrating creativity and authors in a tunnel in downtown Tbilisi. Watch two reports broadcasted on the Georgian television about the painting (here and here).